Chapter 4 - The Ghost from the Past
When I walked back to Dr. Carr’s car, my heart was hammering against my ribs, but for the first time in my life, it wasn't from fear. It was from the intoxicating, terrifying rush of standing my ground.
Dr. Carr looked at me through the driver’s window as I climbed into the passenger seat. She didn't ask what happened inside; she had seen Eleanor and Savannah flee through the automatic doors thirty seconds prior, practically tripping over their own feet.
"You told them," Dr. Carr said quietly.
"I told them," I replied, staring down at my pay envelope. "My mother looked terrified."
"Good," Dr. Carr said, shifting the car into reverse. "Because the panic they feel right now is only a fraction of what they put you through. But Clara... there is another matter we have to address today. Someone is waiting at my house."
A cold knot formed in my throat. "Who?"
"Brendan."
The world seemed to stop spinning. "You invited him? After five years?"
"I didn't invite him. He booked the first flight out of Chicago the moment I told him the truth this morning," Dr. Carr said softly, keeping her eyes on the road. "Clara, you have every right to refuse to see him. I can tell him to leave right now, and he will never step foot near you or Zoe. But you deserve to look him in the eye and hear the truth from his own mouth, not the lies your father fed you."
I stared out the window, watching the snowbanks blur past. Five years ago, Brendan Vance was the center of my universe. When my father forbade me from leaving the house, when my mother told me I was filthy, I had clung to the memory of Brendan’s promises. He had told me he loved me. He had told me we would figure it out together. And then, he had simply vanished, leaving behind only the crushing silence that my parents weaponized against me.
*Did he really abandon me? Or was he another victim of Arthur Walker's web?*
"I'll talk to him," I said, my voice barely audible over the engine. "Without Zoe in the room."
"Marcus took Zoe to an indoor children's science museum an hour ago," Dr. Carr assured me. "They won't be back until four."
When we pulled into Dr. Carr’s driveway, a sleek black rental sedan was already parked near the garage. Standing by the porch, pacing back and forth in the freezing wind with no coat on, was a tall, broad-shouldered man with thick dark hair and a pale, agonized face.
He looked older, of course. The boyish, carefree charm he had carried in high school was gone, replaced by sharp jawlines and shadows under his eyes. But it was him.
Brendan.
As the Audi stopped, Brendan froze. His eyes locked onto mine through the windshield.
I sat in the car for a long moment, my hand resting on the door handle.
"Take your time, Clara," Dr. Carr whispered.
I opened the door and stepped out into the biting cold.
Brendan took a step forward, then stopped himself, as if terrified that moving any closer would make me disappear. His hands were raw and red from the cold, his breath pluming white in the air.
"Clara," he whispered. His voice broke on the single syllable.
I stood five feet away from him, wrapping my coat tighter around myself. "Brendan."
Tears welled instantly in his eyes. He looked at me as if he were seeing a ghost. "It's really you. It's... it's really you."
"Who else would it be?" I said, my voice flat, protective, guarded.
"Clara, I swear to God on my life, I didn't know," Brendan choked out, taking a frantic, ragged breath. He pulled a crumpled, yellowed envelope from his jacket pocket and held it out with shaking hands. "I swear to you! Look at this! Please, just look at it!"
I hesitated, then took the paper from his fingers.
It was a handwritten letter, dated five years ago. The handwriting looked eerily similar to mine—the loops of the *y*’s, the slant of the *t*’s.
*Brendan,* the letter read. *I can't do this. I don't want you, and I don't want this baby. My parents arranged an adoption in California, and I am leaving tonight. If you ever contact me again, I will file a harassment report. Forget me.*
I stared at the paper, a cold fury rising from the pit of my stomach.
"I didn't write this," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "My father wrote this. He spent hours copying my handwriting when I was in middle school so he could sign my report cards and forged absence notes."
Brendan collapsed onto his knees right there in the snow, burying his face in his hands, letting out a sound so broken and guttural it shook the air between us.
"I believed it," he sobbed, his shoulders shaking violently. "My parents sat me down in their study. They handed me that letter. They told me you hated me. They told me that if I tried to interfere, your father would ruin our family. They put me on a plane to Oxford two days later! I spent five years drinking myself to death every night, hating myself, thinking I forced you into giving up our child!"
I looked down at him, kneeling in the frozen slush, weeping like a broken child. The bitter, burning hatred I had carried for him for half a decade didn't disappear, but it shifted.
He hadn't run away. He had been manipulated, just as I had been. We were two sixteen-year-old kids whose lives had been auctioned off by greedy, narcissistic parents who cared more about social status and bank accounts than their own flesh and blood.
"Get up, Brendan," I said softly.
He looked up, tears streaming down his freezing cheeks. "Where is she, Clara? Please... can I see her? Just from a distance. I don't care if you hate me for the rest of my life. Just tell me she's okay."
"Her name is Zoe," I said. "And she's five years old. She loves chocolate chip pancakes, she draws castles on scrap paper, and last night, my father threw her out into a blizzard because she spilled juice on his carpet."
Brendan’s face twisted into an expression of pure, unadulterated murderous rage. He stood up slowly, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles turned white.
"Arthur Walker did what?" Brendan growled, his voice dropping into a register I had never heard from him before.
"He called her a mistake," I said, looking straight into his eyes. "And he's trying to claim the police will take her from me."
Brendan wiped the tears from his face with the back of his sleeve. The broken boy in the snow vanished, replaced by a man who looked like he was ready to burn the entire world to the ground.
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"He won't touch her," Brendan said, his voice deadly quiet. "I don't care what my parents did. I don't care what Arthur thinks he owns. I have millions in my personal trust from my grandfather. Every top attorney in this country will descend on that man by tomorrow morning. He called my daughter a mistake? I will make sure he spends the rest of his pathetic life paying for every second of hell he put you through."
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