Chapter 5

Nora’s POV 

The heavy front door of the Blackwell estate clicked shut behind me with a soft sound that felt like the snapping of a lock.

Standing on the cold stone steps of the porch, I didn't look back. I didn’t take anything. It’s not like I had anything in there that belonged to me. I was carrying everything I owned in the pockets of my coat: my phone and my wallet.

My left hand and leg were wrapped tightly in stiff white gauze beneath my clothes, throbbing with pain every step I took down the driveway. The doctor’s warning echoed in the back of my mind: You won't last a month if you endure any more shock or physical trauma.

I almost smiled at the thought. Three months felt like an eternity now. I didn't need three months. I only needed enough time to breathe fresh air, to walk under the open sky without the weight of Helena’s insults or Adrian’s indifference crushing my chest.

When I reached the iron gates at the edge of the estate, I kept walking. I didn't call a taxi, nor did I ask the family driver to haul me into town. I simply put one foot in front of the other, moving aimlessly along the quiet sidewalk.

The morning sun was breaking through the autumn fog, casting long, pale shadows across the road. The cool wind bit at my face, but for the first time in nearly a decade, the air tasted clean. I had no destination, no plan, no place to go. For eight years, my entire existence had been mapped around Adrian’s schedule and Natalia’s needs. Being completely aimless felt strange, almost terrifying, but beneath the fear was a relief.

I was a ghost who had finally stepped out of her grave.

I walked for nearly an hour before I reached the downtown area, where the residential streets gave way to a small public park. A high fence surrounded a brightly colored children’s playground. The sound of laughter, shouting, and the squeak of swing chains drifted across the pavement.

My feet slowed of their own accord, and I stopped beside the iron fence, wrapping my uninjured fingers around the cool wire mesh.

Inside the park, a dozen young children were running wild across the woodchips. Mothers sat on wooden benches, holding paper coffee cups, chatting, or checking their phones, occasionally looking up to smile at their playing children.

My eyes drifted toward a small girl with pigtails, wearing a bright pink jacket, who was giggling happily as she pumped her legs on a swing.

A familiar ache bloomed deep in my chest as I remembered when Natalia was that small.

When Natalia was born, she had been a tiny, fragile thing with a crown of fuzzy hair and bright, wide eyes that searched my face as if I were her entire universe. For the first two years of her life, before she before she learned how to form full sentences, she had been my sweet, gentle shadow. She used to rest her small, warm head against my collarbone while I rocked her to sleep, her tiny fingers tightly clutching the fabric of my clothes. In those early days, her love was unconditional. She didn't care about the Blackwell family legacy, she didn't care that her grandmother found me lacking, and she didn't care that her father barely looked at me. To her, I was simply Mommy.

Slowly, the sweet child who used to cry whenever I left the room grew distant. The small hands that used to reach for mine learned to pull away. By the time Isla stepped into our lives with her effortless charm, Natalia’s heart had already hardened against me.

Standing outside the fence, watching the little girl in the pink jacket laugh as she soared higher into the air, a quiet tear finally slipped down my cheek. I didn't blame Natalia. She was just a child, shaped by the cold, arrogant house she was being raised in. But the knowledge that I had lost her long before my body began to die was a grief I knew I would carry to my last breath.

A giggle pulled me out of my thoughts.

Just a few yards away, near the entrance of the playground, a little boy—no older than four—was bouncing a blue rubber ball against the path. He had curly brown hair and wore a little blue striped shirt. The boy threw the ball a little too hard. It bounced off the edge of the curb, skittered across the sidewalk, and rolled straight out of the open playground gate, heading toward the busy main road.

"Ball!" the little boy chirped happily.

Without looking left or right, his tiny legs churned as he ran out of the playground gate, chasing the bouncing ball into the street.

My heart dropped into my stomach. "Wait! Stop!" I shouted, but my voice was swallowed by the roar of an oncoming engine.

A black SUV was speeding down the road, moving well over the speed limit as it swept around the curve toward the park entrance. The driver was completely unaware of the tiny child stepping out from between two parked cars into the traffic lane.

The boy reached the center of the road, crouching down to grab his ball. There was no time.

I moved.

Pain flared like a fire through my left thigh as I lunged forward, bursting onto the road. My bandaged leg nearly buckled beneath me, but the surge of saving the boy kept me moving.

"Watch out!" I screamed.

I reached the little boy just as the car almost reached us. With every ounce of strength left in my dying body, I grabbed the child by the back of his shirt and yanked him backward toward the safety of the curb. The boy tumbled safely onto the grass, letting out a startled cry as his rubber ball rolled harmlessly into the gutter. I tried to push off the road, to throw my own body out of the path of the oncoming vehicle. My left leg gave out, refusing to obey me. I turned my head just in time to see the car looming over me, the sharp screech of tires locking up tearing through the morning quiet.

Clang.

The impact was unbearable.

The world spun violently. My body felt weightless for a second before hitting the hard pavement with devastating force, tumbling across the rough asphalt until I finally came to a rest near the curb.

Silence rushed back. The world slowly settled into a hazy twilight. I lay on my back, staring up at the blue sky. The distant sound of screaming broke out—a woman crying out, people shouting for someone to call nine-one-one—but all of it sounded muffled, as if I were listening to it from under deep water.

I couldn’t feel the agony in my body anymore. The agonizing pain that had filled my chest for eight years was fading, replaced by a strange warmth that spread through my limbs.

Three months, I thought to myself, a faint, weak breath escaping my lips as blood pooled beneath my head, staining the pavement. The doctor was wrong. I didn’t even need three months.

A strange sense of peace settled over me. I had left the Blackwell estate. I had left the house where I was a ghost, and in my final moments, I had saved a child. I had been a mother until the very end.

As the blue sky faded slowly into unbroken white, I closed my eyes and finally let go.