CHAPTER 100 — THE BIRTHDAY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING (scene 1)

The morning of Lucian’s birthday felt brighter than it should have.

Not just the usual kind of bright—the kind sunlight makes when it slips through clean windows and dances across hardwood floors—but a brightness that felt deliberate, almost staged. Too golden. Too perfect. Like the world was trying a little too hard to soften the edges of the last few weeks.

My father’s absence clung to the corners of the house no matter how cheerful the voices were. Even with balloons tied to chairs and glitter paper scattered across the dining table from the girls’ hurried last-minute decorations, the silence underneath it all still hummed like a bruise.

But I pushed it aside. Today was for Lucian.

“Mommy!” Aria’s voice pierced through the hallway before I even had time to sip the coffee warming my palms. “The glue spilled—again!”

Of course it did.

I set the mug down and hurried toward the chaos.

The living room had been transformed overnight—or at least attempted to be—into a festive explosion: rainbow bunting drooped unevenly across the fireplace, clusters of balloons floated lazily near the ceiling, and the coffee table had become a battlefield of markers, scissors, scraps of paper, and a single tube of glitter glue now rolling in slow circles on the rug.

Aria stood in the middle of it all, tiny hands held up like she’d just committed a felony.

“It wasn’t me,” she announced.

Arian lifted her head from the floor where she sat cross-legged, a notebook on her lap. “You literally knocked it over.”

Aria narrowed her eyes. “It fell because the table is crooked.”

“It’s not crooked.” Arian sighed. “It’s physics. You bumped it—”

“Enough.” I held up a hand, trying not to laugh. “Aria, sweetheart, just grab tissues. Arian, don’t write everything down.”

She snapped her notebook shut as if I had caught her writing state secrets.

“I like recording things,” she muttered.

“I know,” I said gently. “But maybe skip documenting Aria’s crimes for today.”

Arianna, who was perched on the couch drawing Lucian in what she called his “hero pose,” didn’t even look up. “Can I document her crimes then?”

“No,” I said, biting back a smile. “No one is documenting crimes.”

“Then what’s the point of being a big sister?” she asked under her breath.

Before I could answer, Cassian barreled into the room like he’d been fired from a cannon.

“Attention, everyone!” He threw his arms wide, narrowly missing a balloon. “The schedule is behind! We have approximately two hours to—”

“We’re not running a military base,” Adrian muttered from behind him, carrying a cake box with the kind of care usually reserved for priceless artifacts.

Cassian ignored him. “Two hours until the guest of honor arrives! Two hours until Operation Birthday Perfection is executed! Two hours—”

“Cassian,” I cut in softly, “sweetheart… your shirt is on backward.”

He stopped mid-speech, glanced down, then gasped as if discovering he’d been betrayed by his own clothing.

“Traitor,” he whispered at the shirt, then dashed back out of the room.

I exhaled a slow, amused breath. “Alright. Let’s finish up.”

Behind all of this—behind the glitter and the bickering and Cassian’s dramatic enthusiasm—there was a warmth I hadn’t felt in weeks. A fragile warmth, but real. Like the family was slowly learning to breathe again.

Like we were all adjusting to the shape of the hole my father left behind.

By the time noon sunlight leaked across the porch, the house looked like a celebration waiting to happen. The girls had finally settled, Adrian had set the cake in a safe, child-proof location (high enough that Cassian wouldn’t “taste test” again), and I stepped outside to catch a moment of quiet before Lucian returned from running errands.

The air was soft and sweet with the scent of early afternoon. Somewhere down the street a dog barked. Inside the house, laughter filtered out in warm waves.

And for a few seconds…

peace.

But peace never lasted long anymore.

A faint crunch of gravel behind me made my skin prickle. I turned, expecting maybe one of the girls, but the driveway was empty. The yard still. No breeze strong enough to move anything.

Just a moment.

A sound.

And the strange certainty I wasn’t alone.

I rubbed my arms, forcing myself to breathe. Grief did that sometimes—made silence feel haunted. Made shadows feel too alive.

I stepped back inside.

The first sign something was wrong came an hour later.

Arianna ran to me from the hallway, cheeks flushed, clutching one of the photo frames from the wall—the picture of my father holding her when she was a toddler.

“Mom,” she said breathlessly, “was someone in the hallway?”

I frowned. “Why?”

“This picture—” She held it up. The frame was spotless, but the photo inside wasn’t facing forward. “It wasn’t like this. It was turned around when I walked past. Like someone flipped it.”

“Aria?” I called instinctively. But she was in the kitchen kneading cup-cake batter with glitter somehow stuck to her eyelashes.

Arian wasn’t there either; she was still in the living room with her scrapbook. Adrian was guarding the cake like a dragon guarding treasure.

No one had been near the hall.

I took the frame gently from Arianna. “Maybe it fell a little and turned?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t on the floor. It was still hanging. Just… facing backward.”

A cold thread ran down my spine.

Maybe one of them had done it without remembering. Maybe the house had shifted. Maybe—

I didn’t want to consider any other possibilities.

“Let’s just fix it,” I said softly. “It’s fine.”

But even as I hung the frame back into its place, a strange pressure pressed behind my ribs.

Like the air was holding its breath.

Like the walls were listening.

When Lucian finally walked in—broad shoulders relaxing the moment he saw the decorations, that quiet smile softening the edges of his strong features—the girls erupted into a chorus of shrieks and giggles.

“Daddy!”

“Happy birthday!”

“Look! Look at what we made!”

He laughed, a deep warm sound that settled something inside me.

“Wow,” he breathed, taking in the room, “you girls… did all this?”

“Yes!” Aria tugged his hand. “And there’s cake! But Adrian said I’ll ruin the structural—”

“I said the structural integrity of the icing!” Adrian corrected from the doorway.

Lucian pulled me close, his hand warm against the small of my back. “You did this?”

“We all did,” I said softly.

He kissed my forehead—quick, tender, grounding. “Thank you.”

But his eyes…

his eyes were clouded.

Like he was here, smiling with us, but carrying something heavy underneath.

He tried to hide it from the girls, but I saw it.

I always did.

The real shift happened after presents, after laughter, after Cassian’s dramatic reenactment of “The Time Daddy Saved Us From a Spider,” which was only dramatic because Cassian added screaming and fake fainting.

The girls had run off to get snacks when Lucian called my name.

“Hey,” he said, holding a small box wrapped in brown paper. “This was on the porch.”

My brows knit. “Did you order something?”

“No. It’s addressed to you.”

My stomach tightened. I reached for the box. No return address. No markings. Just my name, handwritten in ink that had smudged slightly, as if from sweat… or rain… or haste.

Lucian watched me carefully, tension pulled tight in his jaw.

“Open it,” he said quietly.

The box was light. Too light. I peeled the paper back, lifted the lid—

And froze.

Inside, resting on a bed of torn cloth, was a pocket watch.

Not just any pocket watch.

My father’s pocket watch.

The one I buried with him.

My breath left my lungs in one painful rush.

Lucian’s voice was low. “Is that—”

“Yes,” I whispered. “It’s his.”

A cold, metallic dread wrapped around my spine.

Because I had held that watch in my hand on the day of his funeral.

I had placed it beside him.

I had seen the coffin close.

So how—

My fingers trembled as I lifted it.

The metal was warm.

Like someone had been holding it only moments ago.

Lucian touched my shoulder. “Who would—”

Before he could finish, Aria popped into the doorway, her hair wild, cheeks flushed.

“Mommy,” she said breathlessly, “Grandpa was here today.”

The room went silent.

Lucian stood absolutely still.

My pulse thundered in my ears. “What… what do you mean, baby?”

She blinked up at me, completely certain. “He came to see the party. He was standing in the hallway. He smiled at me.”

The hallway.

The same one where the frame turned.

My voice scraped through my throat. “Aria… sweetheart… what did he look like?”

She shrugged like it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Like Grandpa. But he didn’t talk. He just watched me and then went away.”

And just like that, the air shifted.

Bright

became dim.

Warm

became unsettling.

Today

became the day everything started to unravel.

And it all began with a birthday.

And a pocket watch that should have been buried six feet under.

For a heartbeat, the world froze.

The sound of children laughing in the next room dulled into a low hum, like my ears were underwater. Lucian’s hand tightened gently around my arm, grounding me, but even he felt far away—as if a thin sheet of glass had fallen between me and reality.

Aria blinked up at me, her eyes wide and innocent, utterly unaware that her words had cracked something open.

“Sweetheart…” I lowered myself to her level, though my knees threatened to buckle. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

She frowned, as though I were the one being odd. “You were busy with the cake. And then Arian stole my scissors. And then Cassian said he would eat the balloons—”

“I did not!” Cassian’s outraged voice echoed from the hallway.

Lucian’s jaw flexed, and he crouched beside her, his voice calm and even, though tension pulsed through him like static. “Aria,” he murmured, “where exactly did you see him?”

“In the hallway,” she said again, pointing toward it without hesitation. “Next to the picture of me and Mommy at the beach. He was smiling. But… not a big smile. Just like he was… thinking.”

My gaze slid to the hallway where the light was softer, slightly darker, shadows pooling near the family photos.

A chill crawled across the back of my neck.

Aria continued, her small hand curling into the fabric of my shirt. “He didn’t look sick anymore.”

My breath hitched.

Lucian met my eyes, and there was no hiding the fear there now—not for himself, but for me. For the weight those words carried.

My father had looked tired before he died. Worn down. His eyes had lost some of their brightness. His smile had dimmed.

But Aria described him the way he used to be—before everything.

Alive.

Lucian cleared his throat gently. “Aria, honey… did you touch him? Or did he talk to you?”

She shook her head. “No. He just… watched. And when I blinked, he was gone.”

A ripple of goosebumps swept across my arms.

“Okay,” I whispered, stroking her hair. “Thank you for telling us, baby. Go play with your sisters now, alright?”

She nodded and skipped off, humming a tune under her breath as if she hadn’t just delivered a message from the impossible.

As if she hadn’t just resurrected a ghost.

When she was out of sight, I sucked in a shaky breath.

Lucian immediately placed both hands on my shoulders, his forehead touching mine. “Hey. Look at me.”

I did.

“Aria is imaginative,” he said softly. “She’s grieving. Kids… see things differently. You know that.”

I swallowed hard. “I know. But this?” I held up the pocket watch, the metal cold now, lifeless. “This was in his coffin, Lucian. I put it there myself.”

His expression darkened. “I know.”

“So how—”

“I don’t know,” he cut in, voice low. “But we’re going to figure it out. Together.”

Something flickered behind his eyes—fear, yes, but also something else. Something protective and fierce. Something dangerous.

Lucian had always been the anchor of our world. But in this moment, he looked like a man preparing for a storm he recognized from long ago—one that he hoped would never return.

“What if she’s not imagining it?” I whispered.

He hesitated. Only for a second, but I felt the tremor of truth in it.

Then he kissed my forehead, lingering. “We’ll handle whatever this is.”

But the tightness in his jaw told me:

He didn’t believe this was nothing.

Not at all.

The Rest of the Day Felt… Off

The girls continued the birthday chaos. Cupcakes were eaten. Wrapping paper was torn. Cassian and Adrian argued over who had “the better bone structure” when it came to blowing up balloons, which made Lucian choke on laughter.

The house was alive and loud and full.

But beneath the noise, something felt wrong.

Almost every hour, I caught a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. A shadow near the hallway. A shift of light near the memory corner Arianna had made.

Twice, I thought I smelled my father’s cologne.

And once, when I passed the photo of him and me at the park—an old, sun-bright picture—my stomach dropped.

The frame was crooked.

Again.

“Mom,” Arian called from the living room, flipping through her scrapbook, “did you add this page?”

“What page, sweetheart?”

“This one.” She turned the book toward me.

My mouth went dry.

It was a sketch.

Not the girls’ usual fun scribbles, not a childhood drawing.

A realistic sketch.

My father’s style.

My father’s shading.

My father’s handwriting at the bottom corner.

“Time is running.”

The pencil strokes were unmistakable. Firm. Confident. Adult.

But the page wasn’t in the scrapbook yesterday.

“How did this get in here?” I whispered.

Arian shrugged. “It wasn’t here before. I would’ve noticed.”

My fingers trembled as I touched the edge of the page.

Time is running.

A message?

A warning?

A clue?

Lucian appeared beside me before I could process it. His breath hitched softly when he saw the page.

“We need to talk,” he murmured.

But before he could pull me aside, Cassian yelled from the kitchen, “THE CAKE IS COLLAPSING!”

Chaos erupted again.

The moment slipped away.

Night Came Slowly, Uneasily

After the party ended and the house quieted, the girls were tucked into bed. Cassian and Adrian had gone home after helping clean up, though Cassian insisted on being “on standby in case of ghost emergencies.”

I wished I could laugh.

Lucian and I sat in the dim living room. The lights were low, the house humming with its usual nighttime rhythm. The pocket watch lay on the coffee table between us, its brass surface catching faint moonlight filtering through the curtains.

Lucian leaned forward, elbows on his knees, brows furrowed.

“I want you to tell me everything,” he said, voice low. “Every detail about the watch. And the sketches. And… anything your father might’ve said before he passed.”

I wrapped my arms around myself. “It’s going to sound crazy.”

“Everything sounds crazy today.”

He wasn’t wrong.

I stared at the watch. “He was scared, Lucian. Weeks before he died, he started saying strange things. He would stop mid-sentence, like he wasn’t sure who was listening. He would lock his office door when no one else was home.”

Lucian’s brow twitched.

“And one day,” I whispered, “he told me that if anything ever happened to him… it wouldn’t be an accident.”

Lucian’s entire body went still.

“You didn’t tell me that,” he said slowly.

“I thought he was just exhausted. Paranoid. Grief does that—”

“You weren’t grieving then,” he said gently. “He was.”

I looked away. “I didn’t want to believe something was wrong. I… didn’t want to think he was in danger.”

Lucian’s hand slid over mine, warm and steady. “But he was.”

The words hung between us like a heavy stone.

The house creaked softly. Far down the hallway, something thumped—lightly, like a footstep.

We both froze.

Lucian stood. “Stay here.”

“Lucian—”

But he was already moving, steps silent but purposeful. He disappeared into the hallway, swallowed by the shadows.

My breath caught.

Seconds passed.

Then—

“Lucian?” I whispered.

No answer.

Another second.

Then another.

My heart hammered painfully.

I stood, moving quietly toward the hallway.

And just as I reached the entrance—

Lucian stepped out.

“Nothing,” he said, though his eyes were wrong. Darker. Sharper. “Probably the house settling.”

But his hand clenched at his side. Tightly.

Too tightly.

He was lying.

Something had happened.

Later That Night

Lucian slept beside me, calm and steady, one arm draped around my waist.

But I lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

Every sound felt too loud. Every shift of light too sharp.

The weight of the pocket watch on the dresser seemed to pulse through the darkness.

And then—

Just as sleep began to pull me under—

I felt something.

A presence.

Someone standing in the hallway.

Watching.

I knew it.

I felt it.

Like cold fingertips brushing along my spine.

I sat up slowly, heart pounding.

The hallway was visible through the cracked bedroom door.

Moonlight cut a silver slice across the floor.

And in that faint, ghostly light—

A shadow moved.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

Right past the doorway.

My breath stopped.

For a moment, I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t blink.

Could only watch as the shadow drifted across the hall… then vanished.

Not in a way that suggested someone walked away.

No footsteps.

No retreating shape.

Just…

Gone.

A soft whisper echoed in my mind, whether real or imagined, I couldn’t tell:

Time is running.