The Echoes of the PastLife in Oakhaven was not entirely devoid of shadows, though they were no longer the creeping, suffocating shadows of the corporate underworld. Even in a town that moved at the speed of the seasons, the past had a way of bleeding through the cracks of the present. One rainy Tuesday, while clearing out the kitchen, Celeste found a small, dusty box in the back of a cupboard—a collection of letters, receipts, and photographs that the previous tenants had left behind. Among them was an old newspaper clipping, yellowed, brittle, and stained with the passage of time, dated from thirty years ago. It was an announcement of the Harrington-Chen merger, featuring a stark, high-contrast photograph of her father and Damien’s father standing on the docks, their faces partially obscured by the harsh, unnatural shadows of the flashbulbs.She stared at the image, feeling a cold, familiar prickle of uneas
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