Chapter 2: I'm Just Passing By

Lily's POV

Click, click, click.

Those camera shutters cut through the air like knives. That harsh sound I've heard in nightmares for years. The sound that always follows tragedy, always captures pain for the world to see.

I open my eyes and the afternoon sun hits me hard. This isn't heaven. This isn't hell either. I'm still alive? No wait, this is...

Holy shit.

I know this place. I know this exact moment.

Around me, chaos unfolds like some twisted movie scene. A group of men in expensive suits are holding a woman who's sobbing her heart out, shaking like a leaf. Reporters swarm them with cameras flashing, everyone trying to get their shot of the "heartwarming reunion" for tonight's news.

This scene. I remember this. I'm fifteen years old again. The day the FBI caught that bastard. The day everything was supposed to get better.

I'm actually reborn. This is really happening.

I look down at my hands and they're exactly as I remember. Thin, pale, covered in those tiny scars from years in the mountains. Fifteen again. This isn't some dream. This is real.

A woman with a microphone spots me standing apart from the crowd and walks over fast, her cameraman right behind her.

"Hey honey, how do you know Rose Whitman? Why are you standing over here by yourself?"

The microphone gets shoved in my face and the camera's red light blinks at me. My throat feels dry as sand. All those memories from my past life come flooding back, but I can't find any words right now.

"You look like Ms. Rose. Are you her daughter?"

Daughter? If only she knew how this story really ends.

That's when I hear it. The sobbing stops for just a moment, and I feel eyes on me. I turn slowly, and there she is.

Mom.

Rose Whitman. My mother, looking exactly like she did that day fifteen years ago. Broken, empty-eyed, like a beautiful doll someone smashed and tried to put back together. She looks at me across the crowd, but it's like she's looking through me instead of at me.

The men holding her follow her gaze. The tall one, Uncle Robert, his eyes narrow right away. I know that look now. Don't come closer. Don't make this worse. Don't remind her.

Then there's the boy my age. Nathan, my half-brother. I used to think he might be my friend. His face goes from confused to something colder. Maybe disgust. Or just disappointment that I exist.

"Honey, why won't you answer me?"

The reporter's voice snaps me back. But all I can think about are the memories hitting me like waves.

I remember the mountains. Every terrible detail.

Those nights when that monster came home drunk and looking for someone to hurt. The sound of his belt through the air. How Mom would throw herself between us, taking the worst hits so I wouldn't have to.

"Hit me, don't hit the child," she'd whisper through bloody lips. "Lily's just little. She doesn't understand."

I was so small then, hiding behind her like she could protect me from everything. And for a while, she did. Even in that hell, she was still my mom. Still trying to keep her promises about the big house and pretty dresses and piano lessons.

But as I got bigger, things changed. Mom got quieter, more fragile, like each beating took another piece of her soul. And I got angrier, more desperate to protect the only person who ever loved me.

"Leave my mom alone!" I'd scream at him, all ninety pounds of me trying to stand between his fists and her face. "You want to hit someone? Hit me!"

We protected each other in that nightmare. We were all we had.

But then came the day that broke everything.

I can still see it so clearly. Mom finding her chance when he went to town to get drunk. Her shaking me awake in the middle of the night.

"Lily, we're leaving. Tonight. We're never coming back."

We ran through those mountain paths in the dark, my heart pounding like crazy. We were going to make it. We were going to be free.

Then I stepped on that loose rock.

The pain shot up my ankle like fire and I went down hard. I could have told her to leave me. I should have. She could have kept running, made it back to her family, back to safety.

But she came back.

"It's okay, baby. Mama won't leave you behind."

She came back for me, and that's when we heard his voice.

"Going somewhere, ladies?"

That night was the worst of our lives. When we woke up, we were both broken in ways deeper than bruises. But the worst part was what it did to Mom's mind.

From that day on, she was different. Empty. Like someone reached inside her and turned off all the lights. She'd stare at walls for hours, barely responding when I talked to her. Sometimes I'd catch her looking at me with this expression I couldn't understand then but I do now.

Guilt. She blamed herself for coming back for me. Maybe she blamed me for falling.

If I hadn't been there, she could have escaped. She could have been free.

The memory hits me hard and suddenly I'm crying. Right here, in front of the cameras and reporters and the family that's about to take me home.

"Honey, why are you crying?"

I wipe my face fast, but the tears keep coming. I look across at Mom again, still shaking in her brother's arms. She looks so fragile, so damaged. And I know exactly what I am to her.

I'm the trigger. The reminder of everything that went wrong. Every time she looks at me, she'll remember that night we tried to escape. She'll remember the hell we lived through. She'll remember that she came back for me, and that's why we both got caught.

In a few minutes, they'll take us both to Boston. She'll spend the next two years unable to look at me without shaking. Her family will stick me somewhere alone to eat alone, live alone in the corners of their perfect world. And eventually, I'll die alone on a cold Christmas night, still thinking I'm the reason Mom could never get better.

Unless I don't let it happen this time.

Unless I protect her the only way I know how.

I take a shaky breath and look right at the reporter. My voice comes out steadier than I feel.

"Sorry, I think you've got the wrong person. I'm just... I'm just passing by."

The reporter blinks. "Passing by? But you—"

From across the scene, I see Uncle Robert freeze. He was probably getting ready to come pull me away from the cameras, maybe planning to quietly explain that I'm the baggage that comes with his sister's rescue. But now he's just standing there with his mouth open, like he can't believe what I just said.

Nathan's face changes too. The disgust turns into confusion, maybe even some respect. Like he didn't expect me to walk away from what they probably see as a free ride.

I don't look back at Mom. I can't. If I see her face, I might change my mind, and I can't be selfish again. Not this time.

I turn away from the reporter, away from the cameras, away from the family that should have been mine. I start walking back toward the broken-down shack where a monster used to live, where my childhood died a little more each day.

Let me rot here. Let Mom forget I exist. Let her go back to her real family, her real world, her real life. She doesn't need a daughter who only reminds her of the worst years of her life.

This time, I'll protect her by disappearing.