Six Candles, Six Suspects

The list of Lies

**CHAPTER TWO**

The wine tasted like regret and poor life choices.

I stared at the deep red liquid in my glass, feeling Mira’s expectant gaze burning a hole into the side of my head. The hum of the refrigerator was the only sound in the kitchen, a reminder of the chaos of just an hour ago.

“The list, Hazel,” Mira murmured, her voice gentle but unyielding. She tapped her pen against a pristine notepad she had produced from her chanel clutch. At the top, she had written,

OPERATION: WHO’S YOUR DADDY?

I took a large gulp of wine, letting it warm the cold dread in my stomach. “It’s not a list, Mira. It’s a monument to my worst year.”

“ Names, locations, as soon as Now.”

I closed my eyes, letting the memories wash over me, a blur of loud music, too dark bars, and faces that seemed so important in the moment but had faded into a shameful haze. I started with the easiest, the one that still carried a dull ache.

“Wes,” I said, the name feeling foreign on my tongue. "Wesley Miller."

Mira’s pen scratched against the paper. “Okay. First love. Obvious starting point. He was… safe.”

“He was married last time I heard,” I mumbled, tracing the rim of my glass. “Lives in Willow Creek. Works in insurance.” The perfect, stable life I once thought I wanted. The thought of showing up on his doorstep with a six year old in tow made me want to vomit.

“Next,” Mira chirped, ever the super general.

I sighed, dragging myself deeper into the muck. “There was Kit. The bartender at The Rusty Anchor.”

Mira snorted. “Oh, gods. The one with the…?” She gestured to her bicep.

“The terrible tattoo of a mermaid fighting a squid? Yes.” A hysterical laugh bubbled up in my throat. “He was fun. Uncomplicated. He called me ‘kitten.’ I let him because I was too numb to care.”

“Noted. Squid boy.” She wrote it down. “Who else?”

The next name was harder to pull from the murk. “Marcus or Mark? He played bass in that band… what were they called? Velvet Something.”

“Velvet Abyss?” Mira supplied, raising an eyebrow. “You brought him to my birthday party. He tried to explain the spiritual resonance of bass frequencies to me for forty five minutes.”

“That’s the one.” I cringed at the memory. “It was a one time thing. I’m not even sure he knew my real name.”

The list was getting more pathetic by the second. Mira’s pen kept moving, a relentless bomb to my humiliation.

“Kaius,” I said, my voice softening. "Kai."

Mira looked up, her expression shifting. “Kai? The English teacher from Newt's school? Oh, Hazel. He was sweet.”

“He was,” I agreed, a genuine pang of guilt hitting me. Kai had been kind. He brought me soup when I was sick and actually listened when I talked. I panicked. His kindness felt like a trap door leading to another heartbreak I wasn’t ready to face. I ghosted him. “He’s probably married to a lovely, stable woman who owns multiple matching sweater sets.”

Mira gave me a look that was equal parts sympathy and exasperation. She wrote his name down. “We’ll circle back to the nice ones. They’re more dangerous. Who’s next? We need a villain. Give me a villain.”

I didn’t even have to think. The name tasted like acid. “Scott.”

Mira’s head snapped up. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely not. We are not even considering that human landfill.”

“He’s on the timeline, Mira,” I said, my voice flat. “He has to be on the list.”

She scowled but wrote his name down so hard I thought the paper might tear. She drew a giant frowny face next to it. “I’m vetoing him. We’ll use him as a last resort. Or never. Never is good.”

“That’s five,” I said, counting them off on my sticky fingers. “Wesley, Kit, Matteo or Marcus, Kai, Toxic Waste Tyler.”

Mira tapped her pen on the fifth name. “You said six candles. That’s five. Who’s the sixth?”

This was the one. The ghost. The man who didn’t have a last name. The memory was hazy, softened at the edges by expensive champagne and a genuine, fleeting connection that had scared me more than any empty fling ever had.

“There was a wedding,” I started, my voice quiet. “Sarah, the former mayor's step daughter? I did the florals and table settings for her wedding. I spent an entire week there. She married that banker guy, Freddy.

Mira’s eyes got a faraway look. “I remember. That was the biggest deal you ever got. You even wore that emerald green dress, that makes you look insanely hot and sexy. I was sick with the flu or I would’ve been your wingman.”

“I felt insane,” I whispered. “I felt… seen. For the first time in so many years. ” I took a shaky breath. “I met someone. He was a friend of the groom. We talked all night. Actually talked. About stupid things, deep things… he made me laugh. Really laugh.”

Mira was leaning forward now, captivated. “And? What was his name?”

“Ares,” I said, the name feeling like a secret I had kept from myself. “Just Ares. I don’t know his last name. He was… intense. Handsome in a way that felt like a challenge. He had these crazy blue eyes that felt like they could see right through all my crap.”

“What happened?”

“We left together. It was… different. And in the morning, I panicked. It felt too real. He gave me his number on a cocktail napkin. I meant to call, I really did. But the more I thought about it, the more I was sure it was a mistake. That I had imagined the whole connection. I threw the napkin away.”

The silence stretched between us. Mira’s seriousness had completely melted away.

“So,” she said slowly. “We have a married man, a bartender, a rocker, a sweetheart, a monster, and a ghost with killer blue eyes.” She looked down at her list, then back up at me, her expression unreadable.

“Newt's eyes,” I said, the words barely a breath.

Mira’s face went very still. “What about them?”

“They’re blue. Really, really blue.” The implication hung in the air between us, vast and terrifying.

Mira looked from my face, my warm green eyes that Newt didn’t get down to the list, her gaze lingering on the name 'Ares'. She slowly circled it.

“Okay,” she said, her voice now deadly serious. All the earlier humor was gone. “We have a list.” She capped her pen with a definitive click. “Tomorrow, we start with Wesley. He’s the easiest.”

The word ‘easy’ felt like a lie. There was nothing easy about any of this. I looked toward the hallway, toward the room where my son with his golden hair and mysterious blue eyes was sleeping soundly, completely unaware that his wish had just started an earthquake under our lives.

“Tomorrow,” I echoed, and drained the last of my wine. It still tasted like regret. But now, underneath it, was the faint, bitter tang of hope.