Roseline’s POV
I sat in the hostel’s visitor lounge with my hands wrapped around a coffee I had no intention of drinking. The thought wouldn’t leave me alone, no matter how hard I tried to shove it down.
I have been a bad mother.
Not cruel. Never that. Just… small. Distracted by the wrong things at the wrong times. By Victor. By the wedding. By building this careful new life while my daughter stood in the doorway of it, waiting for me to turn around. I never did.
Eighteen months of seating charts and community gatherings and wondering if Victor’s friends approved of me. And somewhere in all that noise, Lila had been quietly falling apart. Hunted. Terrified. Chased by things with no pulse and no mercy.
I’d been too busy playing wife to notice how alone she really was.
Now she was gone
