CHAPTER 6: The First Honest Night

Lucy did not trust safety immediately.

She ate slowly, as if another meal might not come. She kept Ben within reach at all times. Even after Daniel prepared the guest room, she sat on the edge of the bed in her sneakers, fully dressed, not ready to sleep.

Daniel knocked lightly on the doorframe. “Can I come in?”

She nodded.

He sat in the chair across from her, careful not to crowd the room.

“I talked to my mother,” he said.

Lucy watched him without blinking. “Was Mom lying?”

“No.”

“Did your mom do a bad thing?”

“Yes.”

She looked down at the blanket. Not shocked. Just confirmed.

“Are you going to help us?”

“Yes.”

The answer came fast enough that something small softened in her face.

After a long silence, she asked the question that mattered most.

“Then why weren’t you there before?”

There was no good version of the truth.

“Because I failed your mother,” Daniel said. “And because I was too weak when I should have been brave.”

Lucy thought about that. “Are you weak now?”

He looked at her—this child who had crossed a city carrying a baby and an old photograph—and answered honestly.

“I don’t want to be anymore.”

Later, after Ben fell asleep in the borrowed bassinet, Lucy lay down for the first time.