「Desi, I'm sorry. Mommy's so sorry. Mommy's going to take you home.」

The floor swam beneath my tears until I couldn't see anything at all.

Stanley hauled me up off the ground. 「What the hell is wrong with you!」

His face was ice. 「Where's Desiree? Where'd that little nuisance run off to?」

I pointed at the powder on the floor, my eyes so red they might as well have been bleeding, my voice scraped raw. 「Right here.」

「What?」

「I said, Desiree is right here!」

Stanley went still for half a second, then let out a cold laugh. 「Glenda, are you out of your mind?」

Brenda snickered. 「Honestly, sis, that acting of yours just keeps getting better and better.」

「What's next, you're going to tell us Desiree's dead and this is her ashes?」

「You'd fake anything for a little sympathy, wouldn't you.」

Stanley lifted his foot and stepped down on the ashes without a flicker of hesitation.

His sole ground back and forth, and fragments of bone scraped against the marble tile with a sound that cut through the room.

「Click. Click.」

Each one drove straight through my eyes and into the back of my skull.

「Nanny Lambert!」 He turned his head toward the living room. 「Bring a broom. Sweep this garbage out and feed it to the dogs.」

「No!」

He shoved me against the wall and pinned me there, so much force I couldn't move. 「Are you done?!」

I stared at his face, inches from mine, and for a moment everything blurred.

On his bad days, his memory would slip—just for a few minutes, but completely.

Once, he hadn't recognized me at all, shoved me away like an intruder. When he came back to himself, he dropped to his knees and slapped his own face over and over until his lip split and bled.

He held me, tears streaming, and said, 「If one day I forget even you—if I turn into someone who isn't me anymore—hit me. Hit me hard enough to wake me up. Please, don't give up on me. Promise me that.」

I gathered every last scrap of strength in my body and raised my arm.

He caught my hand, twisted it aside, and slapped me across the face.

The slap I'd been about to give him landed on me instead.

He held nothing back. Blood seeped from the corner of my mouth, and my cheek swelled instantly.

He flicked his wrist in disgust. 「You actually tried to hit me? You really don't know when to quit.」

That slap killed whatever was left.

The hand he'd struck me with trembled on its own, and he pressed it down hard, his expression darkening with even deeper irritation.

Brenda reacted fast, shrieking as she rushed over and shoved me. 「You tried to hit Stanley!」

「You took my place and now you dare raise a hand to him? Have you no shame?!」

I lost my balance and fell.

My right hand came down on a jagged shard of the urn, and blood welled up, mixing with the ash-grey powder on the floor into a smear so gruesome it didn't look real.

Brenda crouched beside me and spoke in a voice only the two of us could hear. 「Oh, sis. I forgot to mention.」

「The killer? I hired him. And the money came straight from Stanley's own account.」

「I used your husband's money to buy your daughter's life.」

Everything went white. Every drop of blood in my body slammed upward.

「I'll kill you!」

I locked both hands around Brenda's throat.

She screamed but didn't fight back. Instead she curled forward, clutching her stomach, doubling over in pain.

「Stanley, help! My stomach, it hurts, the baby, our baby……」

「Brenda!」

Stanley's face went white. He kicked me square in the shoulder.

Pain tore through me and I skidded half a meter across the floor.

He scooped Brenda up off the ground. 「If anything happens to that baby, I will never let you go.」

I screamed until something in my throat gave out. 「She killed Desiree! She hired the killer! She murdered our child!」

「Shut up!」

He stared down at me, cold-faced, and passed his judgment. 「So what if Brenda really did it?」

「A sickly little deadweight who did nothing but get sick from the day she was born—keeping her around was just dragging everyone down. Dying was what she deserved.」

「That brat should have died in your womb. The child in Brenda's belly is the only one I've ever wanted.」

My eyes went wide. My throat locked shut. Not a single sound came out.

He had completely forgotten that Desiree was frail because of him.

She had just turned one when he stayed up chasing a deadline and forgot to close the nursery window. The air conditioner had been running full blast. Desiree spiked a fever that turned into acute pneumonia, and she spent two solid weeks in the ICU.

The day she was discharged, he held her tiny body, so much thinner than before, and his tears fell onto her swaddling blanket.

「I'm sorry. Daddy did this to you. I'll never leave your side again. I'll never let you suffer like this.」

Now he stepped through the ash on the floor, the ash mixed with my blood, cradled Brenda in his arms, and rushed her to the hospital.

I crawled over and scraped it up, bit by bit, even though it was ground into the dirt, even though it sliced my fingertips open.

This was my Desiree. Even if all that was left was this little bit, it was still my Desiree.

When I had gathered the last trace from the floor, I braced myself against the wall and stood.

I was going to take the rest of her things.

Her drawing pad. The little stuffed rabbit she loved most. The tiny shoes she'd outgrown.

But there was nothing.

The nursery was stripped bare—shelves that had been crammed with toys, with clothes, emptied out completely, not even a single photograph left behind.

Every trace that Desiree had ever existed had been wiped clean, as casually as her short life had been erased.

For two days I tore through the garbage bins, the storage room. I couldn't find a single scrap of cloth that had been hers.

She had lived for five years, and not one piece of proof that she had ever been in this world was left behind.

My phone buzzed constantly over those two days.

Photos from Brenda kept lighting up the screen.

Dim lamplight. Tangled sheets. Stanley's arm draped across her waist. The scar where his tattoo had been lasered off stood out raw and ugly under the flash.

The screen went dark. Then lit up again.

On the afternoon of the third day, a text came through.

「The abandoned Southside high-rise. The rest of her junk is here. Take too long, and I throw it all off the roof.」

The wind on the top floor was fierce. Brenda leaned against the window frame, a red cord dangling from her fingertip.

A protective charm pendant hung from the end of it.

Tucked into the small gap at the center of the pendant was a tiny tuft of fine, soft hair.

「You really are a good dog, aren't you, sis. Called and you came running.」

Brenda wound the cord twice around her finger.

There were a hundred and eight steps leading up to Linden Abbey. Stanley had knelt on every single one, scraping his knees raw, to pray for that pendant. Inside it he had placed a tiny lock of Desiree's birth hair.

Desiree had worn it every day. She never took it off, not even in the bath.

I reached out my hand and took a step forward.

「Give it back to me.」

Brenda tilted her wrist. The pendant swung over empty air. A thin sneer curved her lips. 「If you're begging, beg properly.」

「Come here.」

「On your knees.」

I didn't hesitate. I dropped to my knees.

Broken gravel punched through the fabric and ground into my skin.

One shuffle. Then another.

My knees dragged two dark smears across the concrete.

Brenda threw her head back, laughing so hard she shook. 「Your daughter had more backbone than you—you could have smashed her bones to pieces and she wouldn't have made a sound. But you? Told to kneel and down you go. So obedient.」

She pinched the very tip of the red cord between her fingers. 「She's rotting underground anyway. What good is a cheap piece of rock?」

She made as if to let go.

Her lips brushed my ear. 「Believe it or not, Stanley killed your daughter for me. He could just as easily kill you for me too.」

「No!」

All I could see was the protective charm pendant dangling in midair. I threw myself toward it.

The instant my fingertips were about to close around the red cord, Brenda let her whole body tip backward toward the open window.

「Stanley——save me!」

「Brenda!」

Stanley came charging from the stairwell, seized Brenda and hauled her back to safety, then swung his other arm and shoved me out the window.

「You want to hurt her? Then you die for her!」

Weightlessness hit all at once.

The moment my body began to fall, the wind in my ears became a scream.

The world flipped. Through the spin I saw his trembling hands, and I saw the black diary sliding free from my coat pocket.

Stanley Sanchez, I am done with you.

The diary struck the concrete at Stanley's feet with a sharp crack.

The wind caught it and flipped open a page.

He looked down and read what was written there.

The handwriting was chaotic, unhinged—scored so deep into the paper the pen had nearly ripped through.

Ink had bled where tears had fallen earlier, but every word was still legible.

「Glenda Hughes is the most important person in this life.」

「Don't forget. You must not forget!」

「If you forget, then die.」