Chapter 2 Five Days

Nora's POV

I lasted four days.

I told myself I would not call. I told myself every single morning while I was getting dressed, every night while I was lying awake listening to my mother cough through the wall, every time I pulled his card out of my pocket and stared at it and put it back.

I told myself no.

Then day four happened.

I came home from school and found my mother on the kitchen floor. She had not fallen. She had just sat down there because she got dizzy trying to reach the top cabinet, and the floor was closer than the chair. She was sitting with her back against the cabinet, her eyes closed, and she smiled when she heard me come in, like everything was completely fine.

"I'm okay," she said before I could speak.

She was not okay. Her lips had that pale color they get when she has been pushing too hard. Her hands were shaking. She had been on the kitchen floor long enough that the linoleum left marks on the back of her legs.

I helped her up. I made her tea. I sat across from her and watched her drink it, and she talked about a customer at the pharmacy who made her laugh, and I nodded and smiled and said the right things.

And the whole time, the card was burning a hole in my pocket.

That night I called.

Colt picked up on the second ring. I said one word, yes. He said to be ready on Monday. He hung up.

I sat on the bathroom floor with the tap running so my mother would not hear the silence that follows a decision you cannot take back.

Monday came faster than it had any right to.

I told my mother I was staying with a classmate near school to save on bus time. She looked at me for a long moment, too long. My mother has always been able to see through me, even when her body is failing, and her hands shake, and she needs a machine to help her breathe. She sees me anyway.

"You'd tell me if something was wrong," she said.

It was not a question.

"Of course," I said.

I kissed her cheek and left before she could ask again.

The bus ride to the Harren address took twenty-two minutes. I counted everyone. The neighborhood changed around me block by block, smaller buildings becoming bigger ones, chain stores becoming quiet tree-lined streets, normal becoming something else entirely.

I stood outside the gate with my duffel bag, and I gave myself exactly ten seconds to want to turn around.

Then I pressed the buzzer.

The gate opened.

I walked in.

The front door was already open when I got to it, and that was the first thing that felt wrong. Not scary wrong. Just off. Like someone had been watching for me.

I stepped inside.

And that is when I saw him.

A boy at the top of the staircase. Not Colt. Someone else, same height, lighter eyes, a face that was open where Colt's was closed. He was looking down at me with an expression I could not immediately name. Not anger. No surprise. Something that sat between them, complicated and tight.

I knew that face.

I did not know how. I could not place it. It was like hearing a song you learned as a kid; the feeling hits before the memory does.

He came down the stairs slowly. He stopped three steps from the bottom, close enough that I could see his jaw was tight.

"Nora Voss," he said.

My stomach pulled. The way he said my name, not like Colt said it, cold and transactional. He said it as it cost him something.

"Do I know you?" I asked.

Something crossed his face. Fast. He controlled it quickly, but I caught it, a flash of hurt, there and gone.

"Reid," he said. "Reid Harren."

Harren.

"You're his brother," I said.

"Stepbrother." The correction was quick. Firm. Like it mattered.

Before I could say anything else, Colt appeared from a side hallway. He looked at Reid. Reid looked back. Something passed between them that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with me at the same time.

"I'll show you your room," Colt said.

I followed him up the stairs. When I looked back from the top, Reid was still standing at the bottom, watching me go up. His expression had settled into something I could finally read.

It was a worry.

Pure, quiet, this-is-going-to-go-wrong worry.

My room was at the end of the hall. Colt opened the door, let me look inside, and then said: "Dinner is at seven. Don't be late. Don't volunteer information. Answer what you're asked and nothing more."

"Good evening to you, too," I said.

His eyes cut to me. Not angry. Measuring. Like I had just done something unexpected, and he was deciding what to do with it.

"You're not what I expected," he said.

"You don't know me well enough to have expectations."

"I know more than you think."

He said it quietly. Almost to himself. Then he walked back down the hall and left me standing in the doorway.

I went inside, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared at my duffel bag.

Then I got up and went to explore, because sitting still has never once helped me think.

The hallway was lined with framed photos. I walked slowly, not really looking, just moving, and then I stopped.

One photo. A lake house in the background. Blue water, pine trees, and a wooden fence running along the property line.

I knew that fence.

I walked right up to the photo and looked closer.

There, at the fence line, small and blurry in the background,

A girl. Maybe eleven years old. Laughing at something off-camera. Wearing a red shirt with a hole in the left sleeve.

I had that shirt. I wore it every summer until I outgrew it.

That girl was me.

I was in Colt Harren's family photo.

My hands went cold.

I heard a floorboard creak behind me and turned around.

Colt was standing at the end of the hallway.

He was watching me with an expression that was not surprise. Not guilt.

He had known I would find it.

He had been waiting for me to find it.

"How long?" I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "How long have you known who I am?"

He looked at me for one long, quiet moment.

And then, from downstairs, Reid's voice cut through the silence before Colt could answer.

"Nora." Reid's voice was low and urgent, like someone who had just made a decision they could not take back. "Come down here. There's something you need to know before dinner."

Colt's expression shifted. Just barely. Just enough.

Whatever Reid was about to tell me, Colt did not want me to hear it.

And that scared me more than anything else in this house.

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