LOGINCHAPTER FIFTY ONE: AT THE BEACH Nicole's POV —The morning of the fifth day I finally slept without the nightmares.I knew it was five days because I had been marking them the way you marked things when the days had stopped having their usual distinguishing features, by the light through the window and the sound of the water and the specific quality of hunger that arrived at roughly the same hour each morning regardless of whether I had eaten properly the day before.I hadn't been eating properly.I knew that the way I knew most things about myself that I wasn't doing anything about, clearly and without particular urgency, the way you knew a tap was dripping but the kitchen was far away and the bed was where you were.The room had developed a shape around me.Not comfortable exactly, but familiar in the way that any space became familiar after five days of sleeping and not sleeping and sitting against the wall and watching the water through the window do its constant unbothered thing.
Flether's POVI was in the study at eleven at night when the tracker found her.Not because I had been watching it. I had the app open in the background the way you kept a window open in a room you weren't in, just in case, and I was going through the Harrington legal response with my reading glasses on and a cold cup of coffee beside me when the notification pushed everything off the screen.Device active. Location acquired.I took my glasses off.I looked
Fletcher's POVThe doctor came out at two fourteen.I stood up from the chair before she reached me and she held up one hand, the small gesture of someone who had learned that the fastest way to calm a parent was to get to the good news before they could catastrophise into the gap."The fever broke twenty minutes ago," she said. "Her temperature is coming down steadily. We want to keep her overnight for observation but the numbers are moving in the right direction."
Fletcher's POVLoise's fever broke at two in the morning.I was in the chair beside her bed when it happened, watching the monitor the way she had watched it for Nicole, counting the numbers with the focused attention of someone who had decided that counting was the thing they could do and was doing it completely. When the numbers shifted and the nurse came in and checked and looked at me with the expression that meant: we're moving in the right direction, I sat back in the chair and felt something in my chest release that I hadn't fully registered was being held.She was going to be fine.
Fletcher's POVShe had been quiet all day.Not her usual quiet, not the focused inward quiet of a child who was working through something in her head and would surface when she was ready. A different kind. The kind that had a temperature underneath it, that made her movements slower and her eyes less sharp and her drawing pad stay closed on the table beside her untouched from after breakfast until I noticed at three in the afternoon that she hadn't opened it once.I crouched beside her chair.
The room cost sixty dollars a night and had a window that faced the water.That was why I chose it. Not the price, not the distance from the city, not the fact that the woman at the front desk had asked no questions and handed me a key with the indifferent efficiency of someone who had seen enough people arrive at odd hours with one bag to have stopped wondering about the stories. The window. The water outside it, grey and constant and entirely unbothered by anything happening on the shore, and I needed something unbothered near me for a while.I had been here four days.My mother knew I was here. I had called her from the car on the way and
Eloise's ObservationsEloise's POVEloise had learned a long time ago that grown ups didn't always tell the truth. Not the way kids lied about eating cookies before dinner or breaking vases, but in bigger, quieter ways. They smiled when they were sad. They said everything was fine when it wasn't.
nicoleThe elevator ride to Fletcher's office felt longer than usual. Nicole checked her reflection in the polished steel doors, adjusting her blazer and smoothing down hair that didn't need smoothing. Three days. She'd been gone for three days, and now she had to walk back into that office and pre
Xavier's POV It's difficult to explain this feeling that's deeper than nostalgia. How much she reminds me of Loise, how often the memories of the both of them overlaps. It's so consistent to the extent that uts vexing. Hpw did I not notice this when for 6 years and now that she's been missing fo
The Money GrubberFletcher's POVFletcher watched from his office window as Nicole crossed the lobby below, an envelope clutched in her hand. The same kind of envelope Margaret used for petty cash disbursements and overtime payments. The same kind of envelope he'd seen Nicole accept at least three







