The sculpture from Gabi found its permanent home on the nursery shelf, a quiet sentinel of bronze and glass. Evelyn caught Liam glancing at it sometimes, not with longing, but with a peaceful acknowledgment. The ghost had been laid to rest, not by exorcism, but by integration. Their foundation, stress-tested, had held.
It was precisely at this moment of fragile equilibrium that Eleanor Reed arrived.
No warning. No call. Just a text from the Uber driver: "Picking up passenger Eleanor Reed at SFO. Destination: your address. ETA 45 minutes."
Evelyn stared at her phone as if it had transformed into a live cobra. Her mother was here. In San Francisco. At her—their—unfinished, chaotic, sawdust-covered doorstep.
Liam, covered in drywall dust from patching a hole in the hallway, looked up from
