Chapter 5

ADALYN

FIVE YEARS LATER…

A scream tore through the house at 5:30 a.m as Adalyn jolted awake, her heart pounding. She pressed a hand to her chest and forced a slow breath. 

She had been having the same dream for five years. It always felt so real, like a memory safely tucked away in her brain. She’d see herself running in a wedding gown. Then the dream changes to a car exploding right in front of her and a voice calling out her name. Each time she came close to seeing the face,she would wake up.

It had been five years and missing part of her memories were still not back.The more she tried to remember the harder it became. She was always met with nothing.

“Mommy?” A little voice called out to her.

Adalyn looked up. Daisy stood in the doorway clutching Mr. Bunny, a stuffed toy she never slept without.

“Hey baby, come here.” Adalyn opened her arms, and Daisy climbed straight into them.

“Did I wake you up?” Adalyn asked.

“I heard you scream.” Daisy peered up at her. “Are you having a bad dream again?”

She had the most beautiful and inquisitive eyes. Eyes that felt strangely familiar. Like she’d seen them somewhere before. 

“No, baby,” Adalyn said, pulling her close. “Mommy’s fine.”

Daisy was the only thing that made sense in her life. 

Back at the hospital, when the doctor had told her she was pregnant, she was confused and lost as she couldn’t remember the most crucial parts of her life. 

She didn’t even know the father of her baby.

She had looked at the box recovered from the accident scene carefully packed beside her and thought that whatever happened, it was bad enough that some part of her fled from it twice, once physically and once in her own mind, and she decided to trust her instinct to not call her father.

She woke up early the following day and snuck out of the hospital through a stairwell door that some tired nurse had left open for a smoke break. She couldn’t risk the police coming to ask questions and keeping her in the hospital.

She had a substantial amount of cash she had hidden underneath her clothes from which she used to pay for a bus that was headed to Los Angeles. She traveled further, wanting to put as much space as she could between her old life and her new life.

She finally arrived at a town called Claremont. It was the most peaceful and beautiful place she’d ever seen.

Five years later it had become home.

“Come on,” Adalyn said, pressing a kiss to the top of Daisy’s head and forcing brightness into her voice that she didn’t entirely feel. “I’ll make you cereal, then we head to the cafe. I’ve got a delivery to make in an hour.”

Getting dressed took four minutes. Getting Daisy dressed took twenty, mostly negotiations over socks. By the time they were walking the six blocks to Wildflower — the cafe Adalyn had built from nothing, from a run-down bakery with a collapsed roof and a landlord desperate enough to let a stranger with no credit history and a baby on her hip take over the lease — the sun was fully up, and the fear from the dream should have faded like it always did.

It didn’t. She couldn’t seem to shake off this feeling of unease.

“Can we go to the beach after?” Daisy asked, swinging her legs under the cafe’s front table.

“Maybe,” Adalyn said, only half-listening, her eyes catching on a car that had slowed at the curb outside for just a beat too long before pulling away. She didn’t know why it made the hair on her arms rise. “Let me finish the register first.”

By evening, the café had closed, and Adalyn walked hand in hand with Daisy toward the waterfront. The sky had turned soft orange, the water calm, gulls calling somewhere overhead.

“Can I feed the birds?” Daisy asked, tugging a crumpled paper bag from her pocket — bread crusts saved from lunch.

“Yes but stay close to me.”

“I will!”

But Daisy did not stay close.

The moment they reached the railing, a gust of wind snatched the paper bag from her small hands. It tumbled across the pavement, bread crusts scattering.

“My bag!” Daisy shrieked, and took off running.

“Daisy, wait—”

But Daisy was already gone, chasing the bag as it skipped and rolled  away from the railing and from the water, toward the road that curved along the harbor front.

Adalyn’s heart slammed into her throat. “Daisy! Stop!”

The little girl didn’t hear her. Five years old and fearless, she chased the bag straight onto the street just as a black SUV was rounding the corner.

Everything happened too quickly.

Adalyn screamed. Her legs moved, but not fast enough — the car was too close. Daisy was too small and too slow to understand the danger. Then the car came to an abrupt stop.

A man came down from the passenger side of the car.

He scooped Daisy up in one motion off the road and took her to the sidewalk.

Silence rang in Adalyn’s ears as she ran the last few steps and dropped to her knees beside them. She pulled Daisy out of the man’s hands without even looking at him.

“Daisy! Baby, are you hurt? Are you okay?”

Daisy blinked, startled but unharmed, already reaching for Adalyn with both arms. “Mommy, the bag—”

“Forget the bag.” Adalyn pulled her daughter into her chest, shaking, pressing kisses into her curls. “Never do that again. Never, do you hear me?”

Only then did she look up — to scold the man for almost running into her daughter.

The sharp jaw. The cold grey eyes. The way he held himself, still and controlled.

And Adalyn’s whole world tilted sideways.

Those eyes. 

Familiar in a way that made no sense. She had never seen this person before in her life.

So why did her hand, without her permission, tighten around Daisy’s arm and pull her half a step behind her?