MasukKarl’s POVI stopped. My hand hovered over the keyboard while I read the message once. Then again.Estelle’s email address sat in the recipient line. Her name rested in the gray bar at the top of the screen, plain and ordinary, the way it always looked when we traded work messages late at night.I had typed that address hundreds of times.Sometimes sending her meeting times. Sometimes small notes about things we had both already discussed in person.Sometimes nothing important at all.My fingers hovered over the keyboard. If I sent the message, she would read it. Then she would call Harrison. Not tomorrow. Not after thinking about it. She would do it immediately.She would tell him the photograph had not been Lyndsey’s idea alone.Claire had been there from the start.I rubbed my thumb slowly across the edge of the laptop.The photograph came before everything else. Before the pregnancy. Before the hospital. Before the bribed nurse and the missing baby.All of that happened later.The
Karl’s POVI lowered the phone from my ear and set it on the desk. For a moment I just sat there, the office quiet again.My mother’s voice faded quickly.The snake didn’t.My father’s words came back in the same stubborn tone he used when he decided something was fact. Too neat..I leaned forward and rubbed a hand over my mouth.A snake on the garden path. Small. Venomous. Not supposed to live anywhere near their town.My fingers tapped once against the desk.Lyndsey’s name slid into my head before I could stop it.I sat back in the chair and stared at the wall.She had the kind of mind that could think that way. Months in a rented flat across the street from two families, camera pressed to the window, notebooks spread across the table.She had sorted photographs into rows. Logged who left which house and when. Different pens, different colors, every detail written down.Dropping a snake on someone’s doorstep as a warning fit the same cold logic.My jaw tightened.Then the idea colla
Karl’s POVMy fingers rested against the desk.“What happened?” I asked.“I was going to tell you something,” she said carefully. “About yesterday. Your father and I—we had a bit of a…well.” She exhaled. “It’s probably nothing.”“Mom.”“No, really,” she said quickly. “It turned out fine.”I didn’t say anything. Then she cleared her throat.“Anyway,” she said briskly, “there’s a new bakery on the high street. Ridiculously expensive, but the croissants are good.”I blinked. “Croissants?”“Yes,” she said brightly. “I bought two yesterday and your father complained the whole time.”“That sounds like him.”“Oh, and the Owens girl three doors down?” she continued. “Started university last month and already wants to quit.”“That was quick.”“She says the lectures are boring,” she said. “I told her boredom never killed anyone.”I nodded slowly, though my hand had gone still on the desk.“My book club has collapsed entirely,” she added. “Nobody finished the novel.”“What happened instead?” I a
Karl’s POVThe building sat almost empty.Of course it did. Early morning rarely brought anyone in.My office door hung open. I stepped inside, pulled out the chair, then lowered myself behind the desk. For a moment I just looked at it.Everything sat exactly where it should. Still, the room felt wrong, the way a place feels after someone packs their boxes and leaves the key behind.The desktop looked bare.No crumpled takeaway containers shoved in the corner from nights when work dragged past midnight and we ordered pizza. No yellow Post-its clinging to the monitor in Estelle’s handwriting.She used to stick them there whenever an idea hit her at strange hours.Check data set 3.Call me when you see this.Once she drew a crooked coffee cup and claimed it was ironic.My gaze slid to the right-hand corner of the desk.She always set her mug there. Always. Fourteen months straight—same careless drop every morning, same brown ring bleeding faintly into the wood. I had pointed it out twic
Estelle’s POVHarrison followed in his own car because he needed the office afterward.I strapped the kids into the backseat and pulled out of the lot while their argument continued behind me, having shifted seamlessly from sleep-talking to whether seahorses or octopuses were the superior marine animal.“Male seahorses change color when they dance,” Lucas insisted loudly, leaning forward between the seats. “Mrs. Falcon showed us the actual video. It’s called courtship display.”“You told me yesterday they change color exactly like chameleons,” Chloe shot back immediately. “Those are completely different mechanisms.”“Where did you even learn the word mechanisms?”“I read, Lucas.”“You read picture books!”“I read SCIENCE picture books, which is significantly more useful than watching a three-minute video and then getting every detail wrong.”“I didn’t get every detail—”“You said exactly like chameleons. I was right there. I remember.”“You remember wrong!”“My memory is excellent. As
Estelle’s POVHarrison materialised in the doorway looking like something a cat dragged in, chewed on, and abandoned. Unshaven, squinting against the light, hair flattened on one side and sticking up on the other.His shirt was wrinkled and half-untucked, and he stood there blinking at the kitchen as if he’d forgotten how mornings worked.He moved toward the counter.He opened a cabinet—the one above the fridge, where I kept cleaning supplies—and stared into it for three full seconds before closing it slowly.He tried the next cabinet. Glasses.Third cabinet. Mugs.He pulled one out, set it on the counter, and reached for the kettle. The metal caught the edge of his thumb where the steam vent sat, and he hissed sharply, flinching back, shaking his hand.Chloe looked up from her eggs.“You’re bad at kitchens,” she said flatly.Lucas nodded without hesitation, mouth packed with toast. “Really bad,” he confirmed solemnly.Harrison opened his mouth. He looked at both of them, identical ex
Estelle’s POVKarl called on Thursday evening and I answered because I hadn’t spoken to him in over a week and the guilt was eating me alive.“How are you doing?” he asked carefully.I lasted about three seconds before I broke down. “She’s not eating, Karl. She’s having nightmares every night. She j
Estelle’s POVChloe’s bedroom door creaked open and she wandered out rubbing sleep from her eyes, her hair a tangled mess, still in her pyjamas.“What’s for breakfast?” she asked groggily.I shoved Karl’s phone back at him so fast I nearly dropped it and forced my face into something that probably l
Harrison’s POVThe apartment was big enough for the two of us and quiet enough that I could hear Lucas laughing from every room—a sound I’d almost forgotten existed.He was different here. He ate breakfast without being coaxed, played with his Lego for hours on the living room floor, fell asleep at
Harrison’s POVI opened the guest room door looking for Lucas and stopped dead.Lyndsey’s clothes hung in the closet—dresses, blouses, maternity wear on padded hangers, neatly arranged by color.Her toiletries covered the bathroom counter, creams and lotions and vitamins in neat rows. The furniture







