Chapter 4
The next two weeks were the strangest of my life.
Ethan moved into the guest room.
We bought him new clothes, a toothbrush, a phone. He slept in a real bed for the first time in three years. He ate three hot meals a day. He sat on the porch and watched the sunset like it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.
Lily adored him.
She followed him everywhere. She showed him her drawings, her rock collection, her favorite YouTube videos. She made him sit through every episode of her favorite cartoon. She even made him a “Welcome Home” sign out of construction paper and glitter.
Ethan ate it up.
He’d never been around kids much before. But with Lily, he was a natural. He built her a fort out of couch cushions. He taught her to skip stones at the park down the street. He told her stories about when I was little—about the time I cut my own bangs and looked like a poodle, about the time I tried to ride a horse and fell off into a mud puddle.
Lily laughed so hard she snort-laughed.
I laughed too.
For the first time in three years, the house felt full.
It felt like a home.
But under the surface, the fear was always there.
We kept the curtains drawn during the day. We checked the locks three times every night. If a car slowed down in front of the house, we all froze. If the doorbell rang, Ethan would run and hide in the closet before we even answered.
He was still scared.
We all were.
The loan sharks hadn’t gone away.
Ethan had checked their usual haunts. They were still operating out of the same bar. They were still looking for him. They’d put a fifty-thousand-dollar reward out for information on his “body”—they wanted proof he was really dead so they could write off the debt.
If they found out he was alive?
They’d come for him.
And for all of us.
Daniel and I were still tiptoeing around each other.
I loved him. I knew he’d done what he thought was right. But every time I looked at him, I remembered the lies. The three years of deception. The way he’d looked me in the eye every night and lied to my face.
I didn’t know if I could trust him again.
We slept in the same bed, but there was a space between us. A wall of unspoken words, of hurt, of what-ifs.
One night, after Lily was asleep and Ethan was in his room, we sat on the back porch.
The air was warm. Crickets chirped in the grass.
Daniel reached for my hand.
I let him take it.
“I hate this,” he said quietly. “I hate that there’s this thing between us. I hate that I hurt you. I’d give anything to take it back. To go back and tell you the truth from the start.”
I looked at him.
His face was tired. There were new lines around his eyes, gray in his hair that hadn’t been there three years ago. The secret had aged him.
“Why didn’t you?” I said. “Just once. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
He was quiet for a long time.
“Because I was scared,” he said finally. “Scared you’d leave me. Scared you’d never forgive me for bringing him into our house. Scared the sharks would find out and hurt you. I made a choice. And it was the wrong one. I know that. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. If you’ll let me.”
I squeezed his hand.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I said. “I love you. But trust isn’t something you get back overnight. It’s going to take time. A lot of time. And you have to promise me—no more secrets. Ever. No matter how scared you are. No matter what happens. We talk about it. Together. Okay?”
He nodded.
He pulled me into his arms.
I rested my head on his chest. I could hear his heart beating, fast and steady.
“I promise,” he said. “No more secrets. Ever.”
We sat like that for a long time.
Just holding each other.
The wall between us was still there. But it was a little smaller now. A little less solid.
Maybe, with time, it would go away completely.
The next day, Mom came over.
She brought Ethan’s favorite chocolate chip cookies. She brought Lily a new coloring book. She brought me a mug of my favorite tea, just how I like it—one sugar, a splash of milk.
We sat at the kitchen table.
Lily was in the living room, coloring. Ethan was outside, mowing the lawn for Daniel.
Mom reached across the table and took my hand.
“I know you’re angry with me,” she said. “And you have every right to be. I lied to you. I let you grieve. I helped hide your brother in your house. I was a terrible mother to you.”
I looked at her.
Her eyes were red. She’d been crying.
“I was scared,” she said. “I almost lost you once when you were a baby—you had that fever, the doctors said you might not make it. I promised myself I’d never let anything hurt you again. When Ethan came to me, when he told me the sharks were going to kill you and Lily? I panicked. I chose to lie because I thought it was the only way to keep you safe. I was wrong. I see that now. I’m so sorry, baby. So, so sorry.”
Tears slid down her face.
I thought of all the times she’d held me when I was little. All the times she’d stayed up with me when I was sick, all the birthday cakes she’d baked, all the times she’d told me I could be anything I wanted to be.
She wasn’t perfect.
She’d made a terrible mistake.
But she was my mom.
And she’d been scared.
“I’m angry,” I said. “I’m so angry I can barely breathe sometimes. But I’m not going to hold it against you forever. You’re my mom. And I know you did what you thought was right. We just… we have to do better from now on. No more deciding things for me. No more lying. Okay?”
She nodded.
She cried harder.
She leaned across the table and hugged me.
I hugged her back.
For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could breathe.
The anger was still there. The hurt. The betrayal.
But it was mixed with something else now.
Forgiveness.
Not all the way. Not yet.
But enough to start.
We were sitting there, hugging, when Ethan burst through the back door.
His face was white.
He was holding his phone.
“They know,” he said.
May you like
His voice was barely a whisper.
“The sharks. They know I’m alive.”
