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Chapter One
publish date:
2026-06-26 04:26:42Lila’s POV
I pushed the door open and stood still as my world stopped. My husband was on our marriage bed with my sister sitting on top of him, her dress shoved down to her waist and his fingers dug into her like she belonged to him. Their heads turned toward me at the same second, silence filled the house and I could hear my own heartbeat. Nine years I slept alone, for nine years I came home and smelled her perfume on his skin and told myself I was wrong. But tonight, I carried the divorce papers in my bag. Tonight, I walked into the truth I had always known. I did not scream, I couldn’t even cry…my legs shook but they still moved, I went to the living room and pulled the papers out. Damien came first. Shirt open, hair messy, breathing fast. Victoria followed, fixing her dress with a calm smile she had worn at every dinner for years. “You saw nothing,” he said, voice dull. I looked at him. “I saw everything, Damien.” My voice came out calmer than I expected. “And I want a divorce now.” Victoria smiled like she had been waiting years for this. “Finally, he was never yours, Lila.” I held his stare. “Sign them, I am done here.” He stared for a second, then he frowned. “Look at you, you trapped me with a baby. I never wanted you, Lila, not for one second, I want Victoria, I always did.” It hurt, but I didn't flinch because I was done bleeding for him. “Take her then” I said. “I am leaving with Liam, keep the house you made for her.” He stepped closer, voice rising. “You think this is easy, you took me from her nine years ago, you forced this marriage, you ruined everything, and now you want to walk away.” “I do not care anymore Damien.” I set the papers on the table. “Sign them now.” He grabbed them and for a second I thought he would tear them. Instead he took a pen and signed, pressing so hard the paper ripped a little then he threw them at me. “There. Happy?? But this isn’t over yet, Liam is my son too. Try to keep him completely from me and see what happens to you.” Victoria put her hand on his arm. “Let her go Damien, she isn’t really worth all the stress.” My hands shook as I picked up the papers. I put them in my bag with both hands so he wouldn’t see. I was so heartbroken but I lifted my chin anyway. “I will pick up Liam tomorrow, stay away from me until then.” I walked out without looking back, and for the first time in nine years I felt so light and relieved. Then my phone rang. Mom. I answered on the first ring, still half smiling. “Mom, I did it. I got the divorce.” Silence. Then her voice cracked through the phone, shaking with fear. “Lila, you need to come to the hospital right now, something terrible has happened.” My fingers went numb and the phone almost slipped from my hand as I turned. In the second floor window of the building Damien stood watching me leave. Victoria stood beside him, both of them staring. And for the first time all night I felt something harsher than freedom.
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The Past Between Us 187
Damien did not open the page in the sewing room. He held it the way a man holds something that might cut him if he moves too fast, and he walked out into the hall without a word. My mother stayed in her chair. She did not call after him. She only watched the doorway until his steps faded, then she looked at me with the tired eyes of someone who has finally set down a box she carried for decades.“Go with him,” she said. “He will not want company. Give it anyway.”I found him in the kitchen. The children were still in the yard. Their voices came through the open window, bright and ordinary, and for a moment that sound felt cruel. Damien stood at the counter with the folded page in both hands. He had not smoothed it flat. The yellowed edges stuck up where the creases fought him.“You do not have to read it yet,” I said.“I do.”He set it on the wood and pressed the folds open with his thumbs. The paper crackled. Ink had browned in places. The top lines were a formal order, short and col
The Past Between Us 186
I found my mother in the back room where she kept the old sewing machine. The light was thin. She sat with a shirt in her lap and the needle still between her fingers, though she had stopped moving the moment I opened the door.Damien stayed in the hall. I heard him shift his weight once, then go quiet.“You need to tell me about his birth,” I said.She kept her eyes on the cloth. “I already told your father everything I know.”“You told him a version. The record is redacted. His name is gone. Someone wrote that we should ask you.”The needle clicked against the thimble. She set the shirt down and folded her hands. “Some things stay buried because digging them up helps no one.”“It helps him.”She finally looked at me. The lines around her mouth were deeper than I remembered. “Lila, leave it.”I did not move. “Damien is standing outside this door. He has spent his whole life thinking the man who raised him was his blood. Last night we found proof that the paper was changed. You knew.
The Past Between Us 185
The words left the room silent for a long time, Damiem sat with his hands open on his knees as if the ground under every year of his life had given way at once. He didn’t blink, he didn’t breathe like himself…the man he had called father through childhood and every hard year that followed might never have been the one who gave him life. The name he had carried and the house he had grown inside suddenly belonged to a different story. I watched him from the chair across the table because I didn’t know what else to do with my hands. My father was there too, more gaunt than I remembered, his shoulders folded in on themselves like he had been carrying the weight of this confession for twenty years and only now set it down. The scientist stood near the far wall, his coat still buttoned despite the heat, as if keeping himself contained would keep the rest of us from flying apart.No one moved, then Damien exhaled, and it sounded like something breaking underwater.The scientist spoke aga
The Past Between Us 184
Damien had not spoken since the last sentence about his own past. I watched his face as something shifted behind his eyes, a door I couldn’t see was opening then he closed his eyes. His breath slowed, the room into a hush except for the ticking of the clock and the faint sound of wind against the windows. I did not move, I did not want to break whatever was happening inside him. The first image arrived, he was younger, much younger. Small hands held the corners of a table, voices moved around him, low and clipped, I could not make out the words but I could feel the pressure of them. Then arms came, lifting, carrying him out of a room he recognized without naming, the door closed behind him with a sound. A car was waiting outside. It was strange because there were no windows along the sides, just these dark panels where the glass should have been. When the door closed, the world outside disappeared, leaving only the sound of the engine and the feeling of being pressed in
The Past Between Us 183
We approached on foot, and almost immediately, an older man opened the door before we could knock. The recognition arrived completely and without effort, it felt like a door unlocking that I hadn’t known was locked. He looked at me with the same certainty, he stepped aside and invited us in as if the visit had been expected for years, “Come in,” he said with a low voice. There was something unsettling about the invitation. He didn’t ask who we were, he didn’t ask how we had found him…he didn’t even seem curious about the fact that I had finally arrived at his doorstep. My eyes briefly met Damien’s, neither of us spoke, we followed the man inside. The house smelled of roses, the atmosphere was warm but it did not feel comfortable, it felt heavy like the walls had been holding their breath for a long time. We sat in a small front room that looked so familiar, a kettle sat on a side table, still faintly steaming, shelves lined the wall, crowded with paper and notebooks and
The Past Between Us 182
I waited until the children were out of hearing before I said it out loud.Damien was in the kitchen, rinsing the same mug twice. My father was reading in the other room with the door cracked, I could hear the page turn.I told Damien everything the new memory had shown me. The weight in my palms, the way the air changed after. The certainty that it had been me…that I was the reason the room had gone still.He listened without looking away. He didn’t interrupt, he didn’t ask me to slow down or to explain the parts I couldn’t name. When I finished, he set the mug down and wiped his hands on a towel. Then he pulled the remaining files closer across the table.We began with the names that still sat in the old records from the project. There were not many left, most had been scrubbed, redacted, or buried under aliases that fell apart under pressure but a few were still there, lines of ink that had survived the purge.One of them matched the pieces I could hold, the man had worked inside
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