Chapter 1
The boys were holding me like they were afraid someone would tear me away.
I sat on the dining room floor in my black-and-white uniform, sobbing into my hands while both children clung to my shoulders in their white pajamas.
Liam, the older one, had his face pressed into my neck.
Noah, my baby, had both arms wrapped tight around my arm.
I shouldn't have been here.
I shouldn't have come inside when I heard them crying.
But three years.
Three years of watching from a distance, of wondering if they remembered me, if they felt safe, if they ever woke up calling for me in the middle of the night.
Tonight, they had.
And I couldn't stay outside.
Andrew stopped in the doorway.
His tuxedo was still perfect from the charity gala, not a single wrinkle. But his face twisted with rage.
"Why are my sons calling you mommy?"
I looked up, my eyes red and overflowing.
I opened my mouth to explain, but the words wouldn't come.
Vivian grabbed Andrew's arm before I could speak.
Her blue silk dress shimmered under the chandelier. Her nails, painted the color of blood, dug into his sleeve.
"Andrew, please," she said quickly. "She's been filling their heads with nonsense. She's just a maid."
Liam turned then.
He was crying so hard his whole body shook.
"No!" he shouted. "She's more like mommy! She sings us the same song!"
Andrew went still.
The anger on his face froze, replaced by something else.
Confusion.
A flicker of something I hadn't seen in three years.
Hope.
Noah wiped his nose on his sleeve and whispered, his voice barely audible.
"The one Mommy sang when we were scared."
I covered my mouth, breaking all over again.
I shouldn't have sung it.
I shouldn't have let them hear.
But when Noah had woken screaming from a nightmare, when Liam had climbed into the crib with him and both of them were shaking, the song had come out before I could stop it.
It was muscle memory.
It was love.
"I shouldn't have come inside," I sobbed. "I only wanted to make sure they were okay."
Andrew's anger began to fade.
His eyes moved from my face to my trembling hands.
My left wrist was exposed.
On it was a tiny scar.
Faded now, after three years, but still there.
The same scar his wife had from the night of the fire.
The night I died.
Vivian gripped his sleeve harder.
Her knuckles turned white.
"Don't listen to her," she said, her voice sharp with panic. "She's a liar. She probably researched everything."
But Andrew wasn't listening.
He was staring at me like the room had vanished.
Like Vivian had vanished.
Like nothing existed but the scar on my wrist and the words his sons had just spoken.
His voice came out barely alive.
"Finish the song."
I shook my head, crying harder.
"Please don't make me."
Andrew stepped closer.
His face was turning pale.
The man who had buried me three years ago was looking at me like he was seeing a ghost.
"Finish it," he said again, quieter this time. Desperate.
I looked at Liam.
I looked at Noah.
They were both watching me, their eyes wide and wet.
They needed me to be brave.
I took a shaky breath.
And through a broken whisper, I sang the final line of the lullaby.
The one I had written myself.
The one no one else in the world knew.
The one I had sung to them every single night before the fire took everything.
Andrew stopped breathing.
His mouth fell open slightly.
His eyes filled with tears.
Because only one woman in the world knew that lullaby.
His wife.
The woman he had buried three years ago.
The woman standing in front of him now, wearing a maid's uniform, crying on his dining room floor.
Vivian made a sound like a wounded animal.
But neither of us looked at her.
Andrew's hand reached out, trembling.
And for the first time in three years, he touched my face.
"Elena?" he whispered.
May you like
I closed my eyes.
And I nodded.
