**CHAPTER 8: THE NIGHT BUS**

Nobody spoke.

The broken cups lay all over the floor. A thin line of tea crawled across the white marble, slow and brown, toward the toe of Eleanor's shoe.

Eleanor lowered the phone from her ear. She did not hang up. She just held it against her side and looked at the old housekeeper for a long, long moment.

"How long," she said quietly, "have you been standing there?"

Mrs. Carter's hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her apron to make them stop.

"I only just came up, Madam," she said. "With your morning tea. I'm sorry. My hands slipped. I'm getting old."

"Yes," Eleanor said. "You are."

She stepped closer, over the puddle of tea, until she stood right in front of the housekeeper. She was a little taller than Mrs. Carter, and she used every inch of it.

"Twenty-six years," Eleanor said softly. "You have served this family for twenty-six years. You have seen many things in this house. And you have always known when to keep your mouth shut."

"Yes, Madam."

"Good." Eleanor's eyes were like two cold stones. "Then clean up this mess. And remember what you are paid for."

She turned away, lifted the phone back to her ear, and walked to the window as if Mrs. Carter had already disappeared.

Mrs. Carter knelt down on the cold floor. She picked up the broken pieces, one by one, and put them on the silver tray. A sharp edge cut her finger. A small drop of blood fell on the white marble, right beside the tea.

She did not even feel it.

*The child stays with us. The mother doesn't matter.*

Those words kept ringing in her head like a bell that would not stop.

She carried the tray down the back stairs to the kitchen. She put it on the counter. Then she held on to the edge of the sink with both hands and closed her eyes.

She wanted to warn her. More than anything in the world, she wanted to pick up a phone and say, *Madam, they're coming. Run farther. Don't stop. Don't trust anyone.*

But she could not.

She did not know where Madam had gone. Madam had made sure of that. *If anyone asks you, you should be able to look them in the eye and say you don't know.*

It had seemed so wise last night. Now it felt like a locked door with no key.

Mrs. Carter opened her eyes and looked out of the small kitchen window, at the gray morning sky beyond the garden wall.

"Run far, child," she whispered. "Run far, and don't look back."

---

Many miles away, under that same gray sky, Wren was looking back.

She could not help it.

She sat in the back seat of the old yellow taxi with her small bag on her lap. Through the rear window, the city was slowly waking up. Lights came on in tall glass towers. A street cleaner swept the sidewalk. A man jogged past with a dog.

Somewhere behind all of it, in a big cold house on a hill, Adrian Vance was waking up to an empty room.

*Don't think about him,* she told herself. *Don't you dare think about him.*

"You okay back there, ma'am?"

The driver was Mrs. Carter's nephew, a big young man named Danny with kind eyes and a soft voice. He had not asked her a single question since she got in. He had only turned on the heat, because she was shivering, and handed her a bottle of water.

"I'm okay," Wren said. "Thank you, Danny."

"Auntie said to take you to the bus station."

"Yes."

"Which one? There's three."

Wren thought for a moment. "The one that goes to the coast."

He nodded and turned the wheel without another word.

The bus station was cold and half-empty. A few tired people sat on hard plastic chairs. A man slept with his head on his backpack. The air smelled of coffee and old floor cleaner.

Danny walked her to the door. He looked around, then pressed something into her hand. It was a folded twenty-dollar bill.

"Danny, no..."

"Auntie's orders," he said, and smiled. "She said you'd say no. She said to make you take it anyway."

Wren's throat closed up. She could only nod.

"Good luck, ma'am," Danny said. "I didn't see you. I never drove you anywhere."

He walked back to his taxi and drove away into the morning.

---

Wren stood in front of the big board of bus times. Names of towns and cities blinked in orange lights.

She had money now. Not much, but enough. Eighty thousand from the pearl necklace, sitting in a bank account under a name nobody knew. A little cash in her bag. Danny's twenty dollars in her pocket.

But where should she go?

A big city was easy to hide in, but big cities were where the Vance family had friends, offices and people who owed them favors. A small town was quiet, but in a small town, everyone noticed a stranger.

Then a name on the board caught her eye.

*PORT HAVEN — 6:15 AM.*

Wren's breath stopped.

She knew that name. She had read it in the novel. Only once. It was on page two hundred and something, in a chapter about Isabella and Adrian's honeymoon. Isabella had looked out of a car window and said, *Look at that sad little fishing town. Port Haven. Who would ever live in a place like that?*

And then the story had moved on. The author never mentioned it again.

Wren stared at the orange letters.

*The author never wrote it,* she thought slowly. *Nothing ever happened there. No scenes. No traps. No people waiting for me. It's a blank page.*

In this world, everything Wren knew came from that book. Every danger, every trick, every cruel turn of the story. She had planned her escape around it. But a place the author never wrote about was a place where the story could not follow her.

*A place where I'm free.*

She walked to the window and bought one ticket. Cash.

"Name?" the clerk asked, without looking up.

Wren hesitated for half a second.

"Willow," she said.

---

The bus was old and cold, with cracked seats and a heater that only worked sometimes. Wren took a seat near the back, by the window. She put her bag on her lap and held it close.

The bus pulled out at 6:15. The city slid away. Soon there were only gray fields, bare trees and long empty roads.

For the first hour, she was fine.

Then the bus hit a bump, and her stomach turned over.

She pressed her hand to her mouth and breathed slowly through her nose. *Not here. Please, not here.* The bus swayed around a corner. The smell of old seats and diesel filled her head. Her mouth started to water.

"Here, honey."

Wren looked up.

An old woman had moved into the seat across the aisle. She had white hair under a red knitted hat and a face full of soft wrinkles. She was holding out a small yellow candy in a twist of paper.

"Ginger," the old woman said. "It helps. Trust me."

Wren took it with a shaking hand. "Thank you."

She unwrapped it and put it in her mouth. It was sharp and sweet and hot. Slowly, slowly, her stomach began to settle.

The old woman watched her with a little smile.

"My first one, I was sick every morning for four months," she said. "Couldn't keep down a cracker. My husband used to buy those candies by the bag."

Wren's eyes went wide. "How did you..."

"Oh, honey." The old woman chuckled. "I raised five children and I have eleven grandchildren. I know that look."

Wren didn't know what to say. Without thinking, her hand moved to her stomach.

"How far along?"

"I... I just found out," Wren whispered. "A few days ago."

"And the father?"

Wren looked out of the window. Gray fields. Bare trees. A long way from anywhere.

"He doesn't know," she said.

The old woman was quiet for a moment. Then she reached across the aisle and patted Wren's hand. Her fingers were warm and dry, like paper left in the sun.

"Well," she said gently. "Whatever you're running from, I hope you find somewhere kind to land."

She handed Wren two more ginger candies, then went back to her own seat and closed her eyes.

Wren held the candies in her hand. Small, plain, yellow. And for some reason, they made her want to cry more than anything that had happened in the last three days.

*A stranger was kinder to her in five minutes than that family was in three years.*

She did not know anymore if that thought belonged to her or to Celeste.

Maybe it belonged to both of them.

She leaned her head against the cold glass. *There are two of us in this body now,* she thought. *I don't know where you went, Celeste. I don't know if you're gone, or sleeping, or somewhere far away. But I promise you this. I'll keep your baby safe. I'll do what you never got the chance to do.*

The bus rolled on.

---

It was almost nine o'clock when her bag started to buzz.

Wren jumped. She had forgotten. The old phone. Celeste's phone. She had turned it on once in the bathroom last night to check the time, and she had never turned it off.

She pulled it out with cold fingers.

The screen was full.

*27 missed calls.*

All from the same name. *Adrian.*

Wren stared at the number. Twenty-seven. In three years, he had not called her twenty-seven times in total. Some months he had not called her at all. And now, in one morning, twenty-seven times.

Her heart did something strange and painful in her chest.

*Don't,* she told herself. *Don't you dare feel anything. Not now.*

Then she saw the text message under the missed calls.

*Are you safe? That's all I need to know.*

Wren read it once. Then again. Then a third time.

Just eight words. No anger. No orders. No *come home*. Just a question. The kind of question a husband asks when he is truly afraid.

Her eyes burned. Her thumb hovered over the screen. She could answer. Just one word. *Yes.* It would cost her nothing.

*It would cost me everything,* she thought. *One word, and they can trace this phone. One word, and his mother's lawyers will know which road I took. One word, and Isabella wins.*

She looked out of the window at the long road ahead.

Then she opened the back of the phone, pulled out the small SIM card, and pushed open the bus window. Cold wind rushed in and blew her hair across her face.

Her fingers opened.

The tiny card was gone, swallowed by the road.

Wren closed the window and sat very still. Her heart was pounding.

*It's done. He can't find me now.*

She looked down at the phone in her lap, ready to switch it off for good.

And her blood turned to ice.

The screen was still glowing. Another text had come in, one second before she pulled the card out. It sat there on the screen, half-loaded, frozen forever. Only the first few words had made it through.

*Celeste, listen to me. My mother knows about the b—*

Then nothing.

The screen went dark.