“No. That’s impossible. I saw the coffin. I held my mother’s hand. I watched them lower it into the ground.”
“I don’t know what happened when you were sixteen,” Luca said carefully. “I only know that the woman I met called herself Elena Rivas, and she knew things only your grandmother could have known.”
“My grandmother’s name was Elena.”
“I know.”
My breath came unevenly.
Old memories flashed like slides held to sunlight: my grandmother’s kitchen, the scent of orange peel and cinnamon, her hands guiding mine over pie dough, her voice calling me Sarita when no one else did. Her funeral had been gray and cold. My father had stood rigid beside the grave. My sister had cried because everyone else did.
And now a letter in her handwriting sat on my table.
Trust no signature. Trust no apology given too easily.
I pressed both hands to my mouth.
“She was alive,” I whispered.
“I think she was trying to protect you.”
“By letting me believe she was dead?”
Luca flinched.
The question had no good answer.
A soft knock came at the apartment door.
We both froze.
Then Mrs. Pike’s voice called, “It’s me. And two cocoa-covered citizens.”
I folded the letter quickly, though my hands still shook.
The twins tumbled in with chocolate mustaches and the warm, sleepy satisfaction of children who had been thoroughly spoiled. Lena climbed straight into my lap, forcing me back into my chair.
“You’re cold, Mama.”
“I’m okay.”
She placed both small hands on my cheeks.
“You say that when you are not okay.”
Across the room, Luca watched us with an expression I could not read. Ash walked to him and held out a wooden button.
“For the dragon mayor,” he said.
Luca took it as if Ash had offered him something priceless.
“Thank you.”
“It’s a shield.”
“Then I will keep it safe.”
Ash nodded.
Something in me softened at the sight. My children, who had known only my version of the world, were making space for another person. Not all at once. Not blindly. But carefully, instinctively, as children do when kindness is consistent.
Later, after they were asleep, Luca stood by the window.
“I should have told you before,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I should have told you about Bellweather House the moment I found you.”
“Yes.”
The Man I Escaped Finally Found Me—And Saw His Own Eyes in My Twins
“I was afraid.”
I looked at him. “Of what?”
“That if I added another secret too soon, you would close the door forever.”
“I almost did anyway.”
“I know.”
A car passed below, headlights streaking across the ceiling.
“You don’t get to decide which truth I can survive,” I said.
He turned from the window.
“No. I don’t.”
The simplicity of his answer took the heat from my anger. I wanted him to fight me. I wanted to empty three years of pain into one argument and have it be enough. But healing, I was beginning to understand, was not an argument won. It was a series of rooms entered slowly.
“I need to go to Bellweather House,” I said.
Luca’s expression sharpened. “Sarah—”
