For years, I had imagined my mother driving beneath endless skies, changing her name whenever the past came too close.
Then, when I was sixteen, Aunt Nora told me Evelyn had likely d/i/ed somewhere far away.
There had been no funeral. No grave. No official explanation.
Only absence.
I looked at Mr. Bennett. “Who was the person who saved Carl?”
He glanced at the letter.
“You should continue.”
“You know, don’t you?”
“I know what Mr. Whitmore permitted me to know.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”
Anger rose through my grief.
Carl had entered my life disguised as a stranger, listened to my memories, accepted my trust—and never once told me he had been shaping my future from the shadows.
I wanted to be grateful.
Instead, I felt watched.
Every triumph suddenly belonged partly to him. Every narrow escape had invisible fingerprints on it. Even my failures felt suspicious, as though he might have arranged those too.
