Monday arrived, and just like that, I was sent away.
The morning of my departure, the house lay steeped in a silence so absolute it felt hollow.
Samuel never came downstairs. Amanda's bedroom door remained firmly shut.
Only Margot was there, placing a neatly packed suitcase by the front door.
"Everything you need is inside. Take care on the road," she said, her tone polite yet distant—the kind reserved for a relative's child passing through.
A car waited outside.
Settling into the backseat, I glanced over my shoulder at the house I'd called home for less than half a year.
Upstairs, behind a drawn curtain, a shadow seemed to shift—then vanished.
Was it Amanda? I couldn't tell. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light.
As the car pulled away, carrying me from the place I'd been recl
