Chapter 117

ISABELLA

Alex sat cross-legged on the bed, a tub of mint-chocolate chip ice cream between us, the spoon dangling from his fingers as he spoke.

"I was careful, Isa," he said, his voice low as if someone might overhear us in my room, though I knew it was just us. "I didn’t want to raise any red flags with them, you know? But I asked my parents about your mom—just casually. They didn’t seem to think anything was off." He took a spoonful of ice cream, his eyes thoughtful. "But then my mom… she said something that stuck with me."

I swallowed, suddenly feeling like the ice cream was too cold against the lump forming in my throat. Alex's mother, Rebecca, had always been like a second mother to me. She’d been there after my mom died, comforting me, treating me like her own. Hearing what she’d said was bound to stir something deep within me, and I braced myself for the impact.

"What did she say?" I asked, my voice quieter than I intended, almost like a whisper.

Alex paused, as if carefully choosing his words. "She told me that the day before the accident, your mom seemed really… agitated. Distracted, even. My mom always thought it might've been why she lost control of the car."

I froze, my spoon halfway to my mouth. That detail. I’d never heard that before.

Alex continued, clearly watching my reaction but trying to stay calm. "My mom said she never brought it up with you because… well, what good would it have done, right? But she always wondered if that was the reason your mom wasn’t as focused that day. And, Isa, the car…"

I knew what was coming. I'd known it ever since I’d found that letter.

"It caught fire, didn’t it?" I finished for him, my voice hollow. I could feel a faint tremor in my hand, so I set the spoon down and folded my hands in my lap to keep them steady.

Alex nodded. "Yeah, and because of that… the identification process was complicated."

I closed my eyes, taking in the weight of what he’d just told me. My chest felt tight, like I was being squeezed from the inside out. My mother’s accident had always been a source of grief, but now, with this new information, it felt like something was shifting inside me.

I remembered the letter, the date on it that made no sense. The fact that it had been written after her supposed death. I didn’t want to believe it—how could I?—but with everything Alex had just shared, it made my mind race with questions I didn’t want to ask.

Could my mother have faked her death? Was the accident… something else entirely?

"Isa?" Alex’s voice pulled me back. "You okay?"

I blinked, forcing myself to focus on his concerned face. "Yeah, I just…" I couldn’t find the words. "Alex, what if my mom didn’t actually die that day?"

The room felt smaller, like the air was getting sucked out of it, and my pulse quickened as I let the thought linger, hanging between us.

Alex’s eyes widened slightly. "What do you mean? You think she might still be alive?"

I pressed my fingers to my temples, the growing headache pounding in sync with my thoughts. "I don’t know. It sounds crazy, but that letter I found… it was dated after her death. And now this, what you’ve told me about the car, the fire, her being distracted…" My voice trailed off, and I could hear the tremor in it.

Alex was quiet for a long moment, his usual lighthearted demeanor replaced by something more serious. "Isa, if there's even a chance that your mom… didn’t die in that accident, you need to find out what really happened. You deserve answers."

I nodded, though I had no idea how I’d even begin to find those answers. "I know. But it’s all so much, Alex. I don’t know where to start."

He placed his hand on mine, a steadying presence. "We’ll figure it out. Together."

I managed a small smile, grateful for him, but the storm inside my head wasn’t calming. My mother—everything I thought I knew about her, about that day—was unraveling.

For the first time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the truth.

And yet, I had no choice. The truth was already closing in.

After Alex left, the room felt impossibly quiet, the kind of silence that made my thoughts too loud. I couldn’t just sit there with the questions swirling around in my head, so I grabbed my laptop and sank back into the pillows, determined to find anything that might make sense of what was happening.

I typed in my mom’s name: Emilia Moretti—car accident.

The search results were what I expected. Articles, news clips, and old reports flooded the screen, all confirming the same thing I’d known for years. My mother had died in a tragic car accident. The vehicle had caught fire, making the identification process difficult, but they were confident it was her.

But now, every word I read felt heavy with doubt. Each sentence, each fact, felt like it had a question mark attached to it.

I clicked through article after article, scanning for anything I might have missed before, anything that could contradict what I’d been told. There was nothing. Nothing unusual, nothing suspicious. Just the same tragic story of a young woman taken too soon.

The more I read, the more frustrated I became. How could everything seem so normal, so final, when I knew something wasn’t adding up? How had a letter with her handwriting, dated after her death, even existed?

I rubbed my temples, trying to ease the growing tension there. The timeline, the fire, the identification—it all lined up. But then there was that letter, and the memory. My mother had seemed rattled before her death, and now I knew it wasn’t just in my head. Rebecca had noticed it, too.

The man from my memory—Uncle Vinny, or whatever his real name was—had said my mom couldn’t resist the call for long. What did that mean? Did it have something to do with her leaving? With why she was so agitated?

I found myself staring at a photo of the wreckage from one of the articles, my vision blurring as I stared. It was too much to take in. The facts I’d known my whole life didn’t feel like facts anymore.

A part of me wanted to stop. To close the laptop and forget I ever found that letter. Maybe my mother was dead, and all this questioning was for nothing. Maybe I’d never get answers, and even if I did, would they be worth it?

What if my mother had faked her death? What if she’d left us, left me, on purpose? Could I handle that? Could I handle finding her, only to learn she had chosen to disappear, chosen to abandon me and my dad?

I felt my chest tighten at the thought, the betrayal stinging before I even knew if it was real. Maybe she had a reason. Maybe she thought it was the only way to protect us, like the letter had said.

But what kind of mother leaves her child like that?

I bit my lip, staring at the search bar, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. Should I keep looking? Should I really try to find out if my mother was alive after all these years?

The doubt gnawed at me. What if I didn’t like the answers? What if I found out something I couldn’t unlearn?

I leaned back against the headboard, closing the laptop and resting it on my lap. I was tired. Tired of not knowing, tired of the questions, tired of the uncertainty. But more than anything, I was scared.

Maybe she gave up on me. Maybe I should give up on finding her.

But the thought didn’t settle well with me. As much as I wanted to stop, there was a part of me that couldn’t.

Because if my mother was alive, and I didn’t try to find out why she left… I’d never forgive myself.

But right now, I needed space. Time to breathe. Time to sort out how I felt about it all.

Do I really want to find her?

The question lingered, unanswered.