Then Lily’s phone buzzed again.
This time Michael had sent a text.
Come back before you make this worse.
Another followed seconds later.
My mother was trying to help you.
Stop acting insane.
Lily stared at those words with the bewilderment of someone watching reality being rewritten in front of her.
I reached for the phone, but Dominic spoke first.
“Claire.
Don’t respond.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I know.”
His eyes shifted toward Lily.
“Baby, look at me.”
She did.
“You don’t need to convince him of what happened.”
Lily’s face crumpled.
It was the first time she cried without trying to apologize for it.
The paramedics wanted her examined at the hospital.
Lily resisted until one of them quietly explained that documentation mattered, especially when injuries could change appearance within hours.
That word mattered made her look at the folded deed papers on my table.
She nodded.
Before we left, an officer placed the papers in an evidence sleeve.
The hotel key card went with them.
Lily’s wedding dress would also need to be preserved once the hospital finished examining her.
The dress she had chosen while believing she was walking toward love had become evidence.
At the hospital, daylight began pushing gray light through the windows.
Dominic stayed on video almost the entire time.
Once, I told him he could hang up.
“No.”
“You can’t do anything from wherever you are.”
His eyes met mine through the screen.
“I’m already coming.”
I remembered why I had once loved him.
Then I remembered why I had left.
“Dominic,” I said quietly, stepping into the corridor so Lily could not hear me.
“You are not going near Michael.”
He was silent.
“I mean it.
She needs her father.
She does not need another disaster.”
His jaw tightened.
Five years earlier, that expression would have ended the conversation.
This time he said, “Understood.”
I almost asked whether I could trust him.
Instead, I said, “Good.”
Back inside the room, Lily’s phone began ringing again.
Beatrice.
The officer who had accompanied us asked whether Lily wanted the call recorded through proper procedure.
Lily hesitated, then agreed.
She answered on speaker.
Beatrice did not ask whether Lily was hurt.
She did not ask where she was.
Her first words were, “You have something that belongs to us.”
Lily went pale.
“What?”
