Chapter10
A chill ran up my spine and settled in my limbs.
According to the agency, Linda had apparently slipped in the stairwell late that night and fallen down. She wasn’t found until the next morning by a neighbor who went out for an early walk.
My father’s brow tightened. “What was she doing downstairs at that hour?” he asked.
Charlotte’s face went paper-white. Her lips trembled as she hugged my little arm tighter and tighter until it
grew hard to breathe.
“Charlotte, don’t be afraid,” Michael said, stepping forward to pat her back. “Whatever she intended, it’s
over now. I’m here-I won’t let anyone hurt you or our baby.”
His words were like a shot of courage to her. She drew a long breath and nodded, small and fragile.
Because the fall might involve a crime, my father-as Linda’s most recent employer-had to go to the police
station and cooperate with the investigation.
Before leaving, he repeatedly told Charlotte to lock the doors and not open them for strangers.
We were alone in the apartment.
Charlotte spent the day in quiet panic.
Holding me, she paced the rooms like a caged animal, every movement tinged with dread.
The memory of the tragedy from her previous life had returned, heavier and more tangible than before,
shrouding her in a new kind of terror.
She grew hypervigilant.
The smallest sound sent her into flutters of alarm.
Birds chirping outside made her hurry to pull the curtains shut.
Footsteps in the stairwell made her hold her breath as she hugged me and pressed herself into the far corner of the room.
She protected me with all the ferocity of a frightened thing-an instinctual ferocity for a child she had once intended to abandon.
My chest ached watching her.
I reached for her face, wanting to touch her cheek and tell her not to be afraid that the bad person had been struck down. But my hands were too tiny; I couldn’t reach.
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All I could manage were little baby sounds-soft “eeh, ahh” noises-trying to catch her attention.
Her head bent. She looked at me with eyes full of bottomless pain.
“If… if I hadn’t driven her away that day…” she murmured, speaking more to herself than to me. “If I had let you stay with her… what would have happened?”
“It was my fault… I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have treated you that way…”
At last she wept. Huge, hot tears fell onto my face, warm and wet.
“I’m sorry… baby… I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, burying her face against my neck.
She cried like a child.
At that moment I realized something had changed: the icy block around her heart, the part that kept her away, was beginning to melt.
Not because love had somehow conquered fear overnight, but because fear had exposed a truth she couldn’t deny. She could not bear to lose me again.
She was terrified enough to trade everything for my safety.
Even if, deep down, she still believed there was a fate that would take me at age three.
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