Chapter 148

Chapter 148

Anna POV

I closed my eyes, exhaustion finally pulling me toward sleep, and made a silent promise to the child I'd lost. I would not let them be forgotten. I would not let their death go unavenged. I would make sure that everyone knew what Vera had done, would make sure she paid for every drop of blood, every moment of pain, every stolen possibility. For my baby's sake, if for no other reason, I would finally, finally stop being silent.

Vera had taken everything from me once—my husband's trust, my place in his family, my child's life. But she wouldn't take my voice. Not anymore. Not ever again.

The tears kept flowing as sleep crept over me, warm and salt-stung against my cheeks, and somewhere in that liminal space between waking grief and unconsciousness, the world shifted and reformed itself into something else entirely.

I was standing in a carnival—but not any carnival I'd ever seen in waking life. The colors were too bright, too saturated, like someone had turned up the contrast on an old photograph until the yellows burned and the reds bled. The sky overhead was a strange peachy-pink, the kind of color that only exists at sunset but somehow felt frozen here, suspended in a moment that would never progress to night. Empty popcorn containers and deflated balloons littered the cracked pavement, and the whole place had that abandoned quality of somewhere that had once been full of life and laughter but had been left to decay in its own sticky sweetness.

In the center of it all stood a carousel, its paint peeling in long strips that revealed layers of color underneath—blue beneath yellow beneath pink beneath white, like archaeological strata of joy. The horses were frozen mid-gallop, their glass eyes reflecting that strange peachy light, their mouths open in silent neighs. And on one of those horses sat a little girl.

She couldn't have been more than four or five years old, with dark curls that caught the light like Edward's did, tumbling down past her shoulders in waves that reminded me painfully of my own childhood photographs. She wore a white dress with small blue flowers embroidered along the hem, and even though I couldn't see her face clearly—it kept shifting somehow, like trying to look at something through water—I could hear her voice with perfect clarity.

"Mommy!" she called out, her tone bright with excitement and trust. "Mommy, watch me!"

The word hit me like a physical blow, and I felt Edward's presence beside me before I saw him, his hand warm and solid against the small of my back, his fingers spreading across my waist in a gesture that was both possessive and protective. He looked different here—younger maybe, or just less guarded, the harsh lines around his mouth softened into something that might have been contentment.

"Hold on tight, sweetheart," he called to the little girl, and she laughed—God, that laugh, high and pure and completely unselfconscious, the kind of sound that makes you believe the world might actually be good. Her small hands gripped the brass pole that ran through the carousel horse's body, and the carousel began to turn.

At first it was gentle, almost soothing, that slow rotation that makes children squeal with delight and adults feel nostalgic for simpler times. The calliope music started up—tinny and slightly off-key, playing some melody I almost recognized but couldn't quite place. The little girl's laughter rose above it, and she waved at us with one hand while keeping the other firmly on the pole, just like Edward had told her to.

"She's beautiful," I heard myself say, and Edward's hand tightened on my waist.

"She has your eyes," he murmured, and even though I still couldn't see her face clearly, I knew somehow that he was right, that this child—our child, the one we'd lost, the one Vera had stolen from us—would have had my eyes and his hair and a laugh that could light up rooms.

But then the carousel started spinning faster. The calliope music picked up tempo, becoming frantic and discordant, and the little girl's laughter changed pitch, became higher, more frightened. "Mommy!" she cried out, and now both her hands were gripping that pole, her knuckles white with the effort of holding on. "Mommy, make it stop!"

I lurched forward, instinct overriding everything else, but my hands hit something solid and invisible—a wall of glass that hadn't been there a second ago, so clear I could see every detail of my daughter's terror but couldn't reach her, couldn't help her, couldn't do the one thing every mother is supposed to be able to do and keep her child safe.

"No," I gasped, pounding my fists against that barrier, feeling it shudder but not break under the impact. "No, baby, hold on, I'm coming—"

The carousel spun faster, faster, the horses blurring into streaks of color, and the little girl was screaming now, calling for me over and over, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" and I could see her starting to slip, her small body pulled by centrifugal force toward the edge of the platform, toward the gap between the spinning floor and the motionless world beyond.

And then she was gone—not fallen, but pulled inward, sucked into the center of the carousel as if the whole thing had become a whirlpool, a vortex that swallowed her white dress and dark curls and terrified screams in one terrible instant. I saw her face clearly for just a moment as she disappeared—my eyes, Edward's nose, a expression of betrayed confusion that said she'd trusted us to keep her safe and we had failed—and then there was nothing but that spinning blur of color and the dying echo of her voice calling "Mommy" one last time.

"No!" I screamed, throwing my whole body against the glass barrier, and beside me Edward made a sound like something breaking, like grief given voice. And then—God help me—he ran forward, toward that terrible vortex where our daughter had vanished, and I watched in horror as he jumped, as he let himself be pulled into that spinning void, as he chose to follow her into whatever darkness waited there rather than stay safe on this side of the glass with me.

"Edward!" I shrieked, but he was already gone, swallowed by the same force that had taken our child, and I was alone on this side of the barrier, pounding uselessly against glass that wouldn't break no matter how hard I hit it, screaming until my throat was raw, trying to reach the two people I loved most in the world and failing, failing, always failing—

And then the ground beneath my feet started to give way. Not collapsing exactly, but sinking, like I was standing on quicksand or being pulled down into deep water. The carnival around me began to fade, the colors bleeding out until everything was gray and dim, and I could feel myself descending into darkness, into cold, into a void that had no bottom and no light and no hope.

But as I sank, I heard it—faint and far away but unmistakable, a child's voice calling "Mommy" over and over, sometimes loud and sometimes soft, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying, an endless loop of that one word that meant everything and nothing, that represented all the possibilities I'd lost and all the futures that would never happen, that reminded me with every repetition that I had failed to protect the one person who had needed me most—

I jerked awake with a gasp that felt like drowning in reverse, my whole body convulsing as I sucked air into lungs that felt like they'd been compressed, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard it actually hurt. The sheets were soaked with sweat, clinging to my skin like a second layer, and my face was wet with fresh tears that I didn't remember crying. My hands were clenched into fists so tight that my nails had left crescent-shaped marks in my palms, and I could still hear that voice—"Mommy, Mommy, Mommy"—echoing in my ears even though I knew, rationally, that I was awake now, that the dream was over, that there was no carousel and no little girl and no Edward jumping into vortexes.

I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand, my hands shaking so badly it took three tries to grab it, and the screen's harsh light made me squint. 4:23 AM. Outside my window, the sky was just beginning to lighten, that deep blue-black of late night giving way to the first hints of gray dawn, the kind of light that makes everything look washed out and unreal.

I sat there in my sweat-soaked sheets, my heart still racing, my breath still coming too fast, and pressed both hands against my abdomen where that child—that little girl with dark curls and my eyes—had once been real, had once been more than just a dream or a possibility or a grief so profound it followed me into sleep. And I knew, with a certainty that felt like ice in my chest, that I couldn't wait until some convenient moment to tell Edward the truth about what Vera had done. I couldn't spend another day carrying this alone, couldn't survive another night of dreams where I watched our daughter disappear while I stood helpless behind glass barriers I couldn't break.

Today. I would tell him today. Before I lost my nerve, before I talked myself out of it, before the weight of this secret crushed what was left of my sanity. For that little girl in my dream, for the baby I'd lost, for every future that Vera had stolen from us—I would finally, finally make someone listen.