Chapter 25
Bruce Ford had not slept. The message from the night before still glowed in his mind like a brand: I am alive. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face, half-remembered and half-dreamed, rising out of the shadows of memory.
He moved through the morning like a man chasing ghosts. Ariel’s questions went unanswered. The children’s laughter passed him like distant echoes. Even Lyra’s voice — calm, smooth, always placed at his shoulder — barely reached him. His body was present, but his thoughts were already elsewhere, pacing endlessly around the words that had gutted him.
By late afternoon, he could not bear the walls of the estate anymore. He told no one where he was going, only that he needed air. He drove aimlessly, streets blurring into one another, until his car slowed
