CHAPTER TWO
992 Words
The rain has turned the Los Angeles sky gray. Sophie and I wait at the bus stop near Griffith Park, her small umbrella tilting in the wind. The smell of wet concrete, roasted peanuts from a nearby vendor, and car exhaust fills the air, sharp, familiar, painfully vivid.
When the 20 bus arrives, we squeeze into a window seat. The city slides by in reflections, shops, headlights, and strangers with umbrellas blurred by the rain. I hold Sophie close and rest my chin lightly on her hair.
My heartbeat still hasn’t steadied. Seven years of distance collapsed into a single look.
He didn’t recognize me.
It shouldn’t hurt. I wanted to be invisible. I built this new life carefully, with a new name, a new body, and new everything. Yet when Peter looked at me like I was a stranger, the old wound split open again.
“Mom,” Sophie says sleepily. “Dr. Peter was nice.”
“Yes, honey,” I whisper. “He’s one of the best.”
She yawns and leans against me. I stroke her cheek, tracing the curve of her chin. She looks so much like him that sometimes it frightens me. The resemblance isn’t perfect, but it’s there.
I close my eyes, and memories flood back.
Winter at UCLA. Peter, the brilliant, unreachable pre-med student. I am the design major, loud laugh, soft body, easy target. No one understood why he talked to me, why he walked me back to the dorm, why he lent me his umbrella.
For a while, it felt real. Secret meetings behind the art building, whispered conversations, his voice low when he called me “Chloe.”
Until that night.
A party. Too much beer. Someone joked about his “charity.” Peter, drunk, laughed and said the words I’ll never forget: “It’s just for fun. I’m leaving soon.”
I was standing in the doorway, holding the scarf I’d knitted for him all winter.
The sound of his laughter cut through me like glass.
The next morning, I left campus. Three months later, I found out I was pregnant. By then, he was gone.
“Mom?” Sophie’s voice brings me back. The bus slows near Wilshire and Fairfax. “Are you sad?”
I force a smile. “No, sweetheart. Just tired.”
She studies me quietly, then squeezes my hand.
Outside, the traffic lights change. The city moves on wet, glittering, indifferent. I press my forehead towards the cool window, watching the lights blur. I tell myself the past is buried.
But the ache in my chest says otherwise.
PETER
Evening settles over Los Angeles like a soft cloak, the city glowing under scattered streetlights. Neon signs flicker over Wilshire Boulevard, reflections warping across the wet pavement as I walk toward my car.
My shoes click sharply against the ground, crisp, rhythmic, yet my mind wanders in chaotic loops.
I cannot stop thinking about her, Naomi.
I reach my apartment, keys clattering faintly on the counter. The silence inside feels heavier than usual. I walk to my bookshelf, sliding open a glass door and retrieving a single object I have kept hidden for years: a silver pen engraved with the initials C.Q.
Chloe Quinn.
I turn it in my hand slowly, the metal cools against my palm. I still shouldn't have it. I shouldn't care. But I do. My fingers tighten around it, and my breath catches unexpectedly.
Her laugh used to echo in my head.
Her eyes used to follow me everywhere.
Her belief in me used to be dangerously pure.
I sit down, staring at the little girl's chart again.
Sophie Wells. Age six.
Mother: Naomi Wells.
No father listed.
My chest tightens strangely.
Naomi,
Naomi, with trembling hands.
Naomi with eyes full of history.
“Naomi Wells…” I murmur, testing the sound on my tongue like a puzzle piece that refuses to fit.
The name doesn’t spark recognition.
The woman pulls at something buried deep.
Rain streaks softly against my window, thin rivulets of silver beneath the city lights. I exhale and rest the pen against my chest.
The cold metal presses something awake inside me: guilt, longing, and a suffocating, unfamiliar ache. Something about her is not right.
Something about her is too familiar. Something about her… refuses to leave me alone.
Naomi
The bus slows near Downtown LA, where the skyscraper lights blur gold and red through the rain. Sophie shifts against me, her little fingers curling through mine.
I look away. Out the window. The passing glow of headlights reflected on the wet asphalt. I can almost see my own eyes staring back at me in the reflection, red-rimmed, swollen, tired. Not the eyes of a woman ready for this question.
The truth is dangerous.
Not for me
but for her.
“Mom… why are you crying?” Sophie’s voice is soft, sweet, as if she wants to pet the sadness off my face.
I wipe my cheeks quickly with the back of my hand, startled to feel fresh tears. I didn’t even notice when they began falling.
“It’s nothing,” I whisper, forcing a smile that feels like cracked glass. “I’m just… exhausted.”
The city rolls by, blurred and shimmering. People rush under umbrellas. Cars hiss through puddles. LA feels big tonight, too big, too fast, too unforgiving.
I wrap my arms around Sophie, pressing my cheek to the top of her head. Her warmth seeps into me, grounding me just enough to speak. “You’re okay. That’s all that matters.”
But inside, my heart tightens.
i know one day she deserves answers.
Across the city, somewhere behind hospital walls bright with fluorescent light, I know Peter is living his own night, oblivious to the truth that binds us.
My past is no longer sleeping.
And neither am I.
- Writer
