Ava’s POV
Two days later they discharged me. I didn’t go home first. I went straight for the result and tore it open in the corridor before I could lose my nerve.
I read it once. Then the hope went out of me all at once, like a snuffed candle.
Maria wasn’t June.
Just a child whose story had brushed too close to my daughter’s—a coincidence shaped cruelly neat. And June, my real daughter, was still out there somewhere I couldn’t reach. Still unaccounted for. Still unprotected.
It hit harder than I’d braced for, because I’d let myself build something on a maybe, and now the whole thing came down at once. By the time I got home I couldn’t hold it together. I locked my door and ignored food, medicine, everything but the dull ache settling into my bones. Hoping, it turned out, was worse tha
