𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘
Prologue
The first time Sai pressed the brake, nothing happened.
His foot sank almost to the floor without the resistance he expected, but the SUV continued down the mountain road as if he had pressed the gas instead, gathering speed beneath them while snow rushed toward the windshield and disappeared beneath the frantic sweep of the wipers. For half a second he told himself the pedal had slipped beneath his shoe, that the ice had only made the vehicle feel faster than it was, that one more steady press would correct whatever had gone wrong.
He lifted his foot and tried again.
The pedal dropped.
The SUV did not slow.
Giselle was looking down at her phone, smiling at the picture Leigh had sent of Issy asleep sideways across her bed, one small foot uncovered and both puffs flattened against the pillow. Their daughter had fought sleep before they left, clinging to Giselle’s neck and asking whether she could go with them, but the moment cartoons came on and Leigh brought out the snacks Giselle had prepared, Issy had forgotten all about the parents who had spent nearly two years refusing to take one night for themselves.
Their first date alone since she was born.
That was what Giselle had called it while standing in their bedroom wearing the black dress Sai had watched her change into after rejecting two others. He had told her they could stay home, order from the restaurant, and let Leigh leave early. Giselle had looked at him like he had suggested something offensive, reminded him she had done her hair, then kissed Issy at least six times before finally allowing Sai to lead her outside.
Now they were less than twenty minutes from home, descending one of Pleasant Mount’s narrow side roads while snow covered the pavement faster than the city trucks could clear it.
Sai pressed the brake a third time.
Nothing.
The smile left Giselle’s face before she raised her head.
“What’s wrong?”
He shifted the SUV into a lower gear, listening to the engine strain as the vehicle resisted, but the road sloped downward too sharply for it to make enough of a difference. The speedometer continued climbing.
“Sai?”
“Pull your seat belt tighter.”
Her phone lowered into her lap. “Why?”
“Just do it.”
The softness disappeared from her expression as she studied the side of his face. Sai had never been good at hiding things from his wife. He could lie to almost anybody else with a straight face, but Giselle knew every tightening of his jaw and every small change in his voice.
“What happened?”
“The brakes ain’t catching.”
Her eyes moved to the dashboard, then toward the road curling through the darkness ahead. “What you mean they’re not catching?”
“I mean they not working.”
“Sai, stop the car.”
“I’m trying.”
He pumped the pedal again, harder this time, while keeping both hands steady on the wheel. The SUV continued forward, its tires humming over snow and thin sheets of ice.
Giselle grabbed the seat belt and pulled it across her chest. “Try the emergency brake.”
“Can’t pull it all the way at this speed.”
“Then do something.”
“I am.”
The fear in her voice cut through the calm he was forcing himself to maintain. Sai glanced at her for only a moment before returning his attention to the road.
“Call 911.”
Her hands shook as she unlocked her phone. The screen slipped beneath her fingers twice before she managed to place the call and turn on the speaker.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Our brakes aren’t working.” Giselle’s words came quickly, nearly folding into each other. “We’re on Mount Haven Road going toward the upper estates. We can’t slow down.”
Sai shifted into another lower gear. The engine roared loud enough to drown out the dispatcher’s first question, but Giselle repeated the location and gave the make and color of their SUV while staring through the windshield.
Snow covered most of the road now. The dark outline of the mountain rose beside them on one side, while a low guardrail separated them from the steep wooded drop on the other. There were no businesses, no houses close enough to pull into, and no wide shoulder where Sai could safely run the vehicle off the road.
“Is there an uphill road or an open area ahead?” the dispatcher asked.
“No,” Giselle answered. “It’s the mountain. There’s nowhere to go.”
“Keep the vehicle in the lowest safe gear. Do not turn off the engine. Apply steady pressure to the brakes.”
“He already did that,” Giselle said, her voice cracking. “They’re not working.”
Sai tested the emergency brake carefully.
The rear tires locked for a fraction of a second and the SUV swung toward the center line. He released it immediately, correcting the steering before they crossed completely into the opposite lane.
Giselle gasped and grabbed the door handle.
“You good?” Sai asked.
“Yes.”
“You hit anything?”
“No.”
“Keep your belt tight.”
“Sai, I’m fine.”
The road curved ahead, disappearing behind a line of trees glazed with snow.
Sai’s grip tightened around the steering wheel. “Hold on.”
He guided the SUV into the curve, trying to use the incline at the edge of the mountain to slow them without striking the rock wall. The driver’s-side tires scraped through packed snow, jolting the vehicle hard enough to make Giselle’s shoulder strike the door.
The speed dropped slightly.
Then the SUV slid away from the mountain and began gaining again.
The dispatcher’s voice continued through the phone, calm and controlled, telling them emergency units were responding and asking whether they could see any mile markers.
Giselle twisted in her seat, searching through snow and darkness.
“I don’t see anything.”
Sai looked toward the next curve.
Too sharp.
Too close.
“Call Solani.”
Giselle turned back toward him. “What?”
“Call Solani.”
“No.”
“Giselle.”
“We’re on the phone with the police. They’re coming.”
“Call her and tell her go to the house.”
Her lips parted, but no sound came out at first. Sai watched understanding move across her face, followed by a fear deeper than anything the failing brakes had caused.
“No.”
“Baby.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I need somebody with Issy.”
“Leigh is with her.”
“Leigh seventeen.”
“She has the emergency numbers. She knows what to do.”
“Call Solani.”
Giselle shook her head so hard her curls brushed across her cheeks. “No, because if I call her, that means you think we’re not going to make it home.”
Sai reached across the console and caught her hand. His palm was cold despite the heat blowing through the vents.
“I need you to listen to me.”
“We’re going home.”
“I know.”
“You don’t sound like you know.”
“We going home,” he repeated, though the words felt like something he was trying to build for her rather than something he truly believed. “But call her anyway.”
Giselle stared at him, tears filling her eyes.
The SUV hit another patch of ice and shifted sideways. Sai pulled the wheel in the direction of the slide, fighting the instinct to jerk it the other way. The tires regained traction with a violent jolt.
Giselle’s fingers tightened around his.
“Tell her we love Issy,” Sai said.
“You’re going to tell Issy yourself.”
“Tell her every day.”
“Stop.”
“Giselle.”
“Stop talking like that.”
“If something happen—”
“Nothing is happening.”
“If something happen, Solani got her.”
Giselle’s tears spilled over. “And Saint.”
Sai nodded once.
His brother’s name settled between them with all the weight of the decision they had made months earlier, sitting across from their attorney and signing papers neither of them had expected anyone to need for years. Sai had stared at Saint’s name longer than the others, knowing exactly what people would think if they ever read it. His brother lived a life Sai had deliberately stayed away from. Saint had enemies, secrets, and a reputation that followed him into rooms before he entered them.
But Sai knew something other people did not.
Saint had never failed him.
Not once.
He had given Sai and Giselle their home without keeping his name attached to it. He had protected their family without ever bringing his business through their front door. He had loved Issy from the moment Giselle announced she was pregnant, buying too much, worrying too quietly, and appearing whenever Sai called no matter the hour.
Sai did not know if his brother understood bedtime routines, fevers, tantrums, or how to make a little girl feel safe when the dark frightened her.
He knew Saint would learn.
He knew Saint would die before allowing anything to happen to his daughter.
“Saint gon’ protect her,” Sai said.
Giselle pressed the back of her free hand to her mouth.
“And Solani will love her,” she whispered.
Sai squeezed her fingers.
They both knew that too.
Solani had loved Issy before she was born. She had painted part of the nursery with Giselle, held her hand through labor, and spent every birthday and holiday close enough that Issy called her TT before she could pronounce most full sentences. Solani knew what it meant to grow up without adults who stayed, and Giselle trusted her to make sure her daughter never felt the kind of abandonment they had survived together.
The emergency dispatcher was still talking, but neither of them heard every word now.
The road bent sharply to the right.
Sai tried the brake again.
The pedal hit the floor.
The SUV entered the curve too fast.
The rear tires broke loose first, sliding toward the opposite lane while the front continued pointing toward the guardrail. Sai turned into the skid, but black ice covered the bend like glass beneath the snow.
The vehicle spun.
Giselle screamed.
The passenger side slammed into the guardrail with a sound that seemed to tear the night open. Metal folded, glass cracked, and the seat belt cut into Giselle’s chest as the impact threw her sideways.
For one impossible second, the barrier held.
The SUV rested at an angle, half of it still on the road and the other half suspended above the steep drop. Snow continued falling over the windshield as if nothing had happened.
Giselle’s breathing came in small, terrified sounds.
“Sai?”
“I’m here.”
Her hand was still inside his.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
The guardrail groaned beneath them.
The dispatcher shouted through the phone, asking whether they could hear her, but Giselle’s phone had fallen beneath the dashboard.
Sai turned toward his wife.
There was blood near her hairline, a thin line running toward her eyebrow, and he wanted to reach for it, wipe it away, tell her it was nothing. He wanted to take her home, stand in Issy’s doorway, and complain that their daughter had somehow turned herself sideways in bed again.
Instead, the SUV shifted another inch toward the edge.
Giselle looked at him, and Sai saw the moment she understood.
“I love you,” he said.
Her face crumpled. “Sai.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
The barrier bent lower.
Sai reached across the console with his free arm, trying to pull her as close as their seat belts allowed.
“I got you.”
The metal gave way beneath them.
The SUV dropped into the darkness.
Giselle’s phone flew from beneath the dashboard, its screen still glowing with the open emergency call.
Sai never released her hand.
Leigh woke with sunlight warming the side of her face and the strange, immediate feeling that something was wrong.
The television had shut itself off sometime during the night, leaving the living room quiet except for the hum of the heating system and the soft ticking of the clock on the wall. A blanket was twisted around her legs, and her phone rested facedown on the cushion beside her.
She blinked toward the windows.
Morning light spilled over the snow-covered yard.
Leigh sat up so quickly her head spun.
For a few seconds she only stared through the glass, trying to understand why the sight of daylight frightened her so badly. Then she grabbed her phone and saw the time.
Giselle and Sai were not home.
They were never late.
Leigh had watched Issy since she was a baby, sometimes for full workdays and other times for a few hours while Giselle and Sai handled errands. They always gave her more information than she needed, always called if traffic slowed them down, and always returned when they promised.
The only message on her phone was the one Giselle had sent the night before.
We’re heading home now. Roads are slow, but we shouldn’t be too late. Call if she wakes.
Leigh called Giselle.
It rang until voicemail answered.
She called Sai.
The same thing.
Her heart began beating harder as she untangled herself from the blanket and hurried toward the foyer. Their coats were not hanging in the closet. Their shoes were still missing from beside the door.
She checked the garage.
Empty.
She rushed upstairs, passing Issy’s closed bedroom door, and pushed open the master bedroom. The bed was untouched. Giselle’s jewelry case remained open on the dresser, the perfume she had worn the night before sitting beside it.
Leigh called both of them again.
No answer.
A small voice came from the hallway.
“Mommy?”
Leigh turned.
Issy stood outside her bedroom in pink pajamas, her blanket gathered in one hand while she rubbed the other across her eyes. Her curls had loosened from their puffs during the night, and one side of her face carried faint lines from the pillow.
Leigh forced herself to breathe normally.
“Good morning, Issy.”
The little girl looked past her into the master bedroom. “Mommy in there?”
“No, baby.”
“Daddy?”
“Not yet.”
Issy’s eyes returned to Leigh. “They at dinner?”
Leigh swallowed. “They were.”
“They coming home?”
“I’m trying to find them.”
She lifted Issy and carried her downstairs, keeping her voice soft while fear crawled through every part of her. She placed a cup of milk and a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table, though Issy only touched one strawberry before asking for her parents again.
Leigh called the police.
She explained that she was seventeen, that she had been babysitting overnight, and that the child’s parents had never returned. She repeated that Giselle and Sai were never late, that they had last texted to say they were on the way home, and that neither was answering.
The dispatcher asked for the address.
Leigh had barely finished giving it when headlights swept across the front windows.
Relief struck so quickly that tears filled her eyes.
“They’re here,” she told Issy.
She rushed toward the foyer with Issy following behind her, but the vehicles moving around the circular driveway were not Giselle and Sai’s SUV.
They were police cars.
Two officers walked toward the front door while snow crunched beneath their boots. Neither moved with the urgency of someone responding to a fresh missing-person report.
They moved slowly.
Carefully.
Leigh opened the door before they knocked.
The older officer’s gaze went from her face to Issy standing behind her with her blanket.
“Are your parents home?”
Leigh shook her head. “I’m the babysitter.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Is there another adult inside?”
“No.”
The second officer looked past her into the quiet house. “The child’s parents are Giselle and Sai Whiteford?”
“Yes.” Leigh tightened her hand around the edge of the door. “Did you find them?”
The officers exchanged a glance.
It lasted only a second, but Leigh understood enough to feel her stomach turn.
The older officer lowered his voice. “We need to contact an adult family member. Do you know where their emergency contacts are?”
Leigh pressed trembling fingers to her forehead. Giselle had shown her the sheet. Sai had asked about it before leaving. She knew it was somewhere obvious, but fear had emptied her mind.
“I think it’s in the kitchen. I know they have one, but—”
“Fridge.”
Everyone looked down.
Issy had stepped around Leigh and was pointing toward the kitchen.
“Fridge,” she repeated.
The officers followed as the little girl walked ahead of them, her blanket dragging over the floor. She stopped in front of the refrigerator and reached toward a sheet of paper secured beneath a strawberry-shaped magnet.
“Unca Saint.”
Her finger moved lower.
“TT Lani.”
The older officer removed the page.
At the top, written in Giselle’s neat handwriting, were instructions to contact either person if she and Sai could not be reached.
Saint Whiteford was listed first.
Solani Kross was listed beneath him.
The officer took out his phone.
Leigh stood in the kitchen holding herself around the middle while Issy stared up at the adults, unaware that her parents had already prepared her for a morning none of them had imagined would come.
Saint answered on the second ring.
He was near the warehouse district, standing beside a black truck while two men argued over numbers he had stopped listening to before his phone vibrated. The Pleasant Mount number made him step away before answering.
“Yeah?”
“Is this Saint Whiteford?”
“Who asking?”
“This is Officer Graham with the Pleasant Mount Police Department. We’re currently at your brother’s residence.”
Saint’s body went still.
“What happened?”
“His daughter is safe.”
The sentence did not answer his question, but it told him enough to make the warehouse district disappear around him.
“Where Sai at?”
“Mr. Whiteford, we need you to come to the residence as soon as possible.”
“What happened to my brother?”
“I’m not able to discuss the details over the phone.”
Saint stared across the icy pavement, his free hand slowly closing into a fist.
“You just called me from my brother house and led with his daughter safe. So where the fuck is Sai?”
There was a pause.
“Please drive carefully. The roads are still dangerous.”
Saint ended the call.
One of the men near the truck started speaking to him, but Saint was already walking away.
“Handle it,” he said without looking back.
He got into his vehicle, entered Sai’s address even though he knew the route, and pulled away from the warehouse district with the officer’s words repeating in his head.
His daughter is safe.
Not your brother is safe.
Not your brother was in an accident.
His daughter is safe.
Forty minutes away.
Saint made it in thirty-four.
Solani was halfway through a virtual case conference at her downtown office when her personal phone rang. She almost ignored it because the number was unfamiliar, but something made her excuse herself and answer.
“Hello?”
“Is this Solani Kross?”
“Yes.”
“This is Officer Ramirez with the Pleasant Mount Police Department. We’re at the residence of Giselle and Sai Whiteford.”
Solani stood so quickly that her chair rolled backward.
“Why?”
“Isabella is safe, but we need you to come to the home.”
Her hand tightened around the phone. “Where is Giselle?”
“Ma’am, we need to speak with you in person.”
“No. You called me, so tell me what happened.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t provide those details over the phone.”
Solani pressed her palm against the desk to steady herself. The conference continued through the laptop speakers behind her, voices discussing placement resources and follow-up visits as though her life had not split open in the middle of an ordinary morning.
“Is she hurt?”
“Isabella is not hurt.”
“I asked about Giselle.”
The officer repeated the request for her to come.
Solani did not remember ending the call. She did not remember telling her supervisor where she was going or grabbing her coat from the back of the door. Her bag remained beneath her desk, and her laptop stayed open to the meeting while she hurried toward the elevator with her keys cutting into her palm.
Downtown traffic was slow because of the snow, and every red light felt personal.
She called Giselle three times.
Then Sai.
Then Giselle again.
No one answered.
By the time she reached the road leading toward the estate, her hands were trembling so badly she had to grip the steering wheel harder to keep them steady.
Thirty-five minutes after leaving work, Solani turned through the gates at the same moment a black SUV entered from the opposite side of the circular drive.
Both vehicles stopped near the front steps.
Saint stepped out first.
Solani recognized him immediately, though they had only met twice before, both times at Issy’s birthday parties. He was taller and broader than she remembered, dressed in black from his coat to his shoes, his face so unreadable that it made her own fear deepen.
He recognized her too.
Neither spoke.
They looked toward the police cars, then at the open front door, and moved at the same time.
Leigh was in the living room with Issy when they entered. The teenager sat on the edge of the couch, her face pale and tear-streaked, while Issy stood near the coffee table holding a stuffed rabbit.
The little girl saw them and dropped it.
“TT!”
Solani crossed the room quickly and crouched before Issy reached her, gathering her so tightly the child made a small surprised sound.
“Hi, baby. Hi.”
She pulled back just enough to check Issy’s face, arms, and legs even though the officer had said she was unharmed.
“You okay? Did you eat? Are you hurt anywhere?”
Issy shook her head. “Mommy gone.”
Solani’s breath caught.
“Mommy and Daddy at dinner,” Issy continued. “They late.”
Saint had stopped a few feet away, staring at his niece with a look Solani could not read. Then he moved closer, crouched beside them, and placed one hand gently against the back of Issy’s head.
“You good, lil’ mama?”
Issy reached for him immediately.
Saint took her from Solani, lifting her against his chest as if he needed the weight of her there to keep standing.
“Unca Saint, Mommy not home.”
He closed his eyes for one second.
“I know.”
Leigh began crying harder from the couch.
Solani stood and went to her, wrapping an arm around the girl while asking what happened. Leigh explained between broken sentences that she had fallen asleep, woken in the morning, and realized they had never returned.
“They always call,” she said. “They never do this. I called them, and nobody answered, and then the police came. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Solani told her, though her own voice had begun shaking. “You stayed with Issy. You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”
An officer approached them and asked if Solani and Saint could step into the study.
Saint looked toward him, then at Issy.
“We need to speak privately,” the officer said.
Saint handed Issy back to Leigh only after the girl promised not to leave the living room. Solani kissed Issy’s forehead, forced herself to release her, and followed the officers with Saint beside her.
The study doors closed behind them.
Solani remained standing.
Saint did too.
Officer Graham looked between them before speaking. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Earlier this morning, emergency services located a vehicle below Mount Haven Road. It appears the SUV left the roadway after striking the guardrail.”
Solani stared at him.
The officer continued, but the words began separating from their meaning.
“Both occupants were identified as Giselle and Sai Whiteford.”
Saint’s face did not change.
Solani’s lips parted.
“The preliminary report suggests the brakes may have failed while they were traveling down the mountain. The road conditions likely contributed to the vehicle losing control.”
“No,” Solani whispered.
“I’m very sorry. Neither of them survived the crash.”
The room disappeared.
Solani heard herself make a sound she did not recognize before her knees gave out beneath her. She caught the edge of a chair, but it tipped with her, and the officer reached forward too late to stop her from falling onto the rug.
“No.”
Her hands covered her face as sobs tore from her chest, violent enough to leave her gasping between them.
“No, no, no.”
Giselle could not be dead.
Giselle had promised at eleven years old that they would never lose each other, even when caseworkers separated them and foster parents tried to convince them that childhood friendships did not survive the system. They had found each other after every placement, after every changed phone number, after every adult who underestimated how tightly two girls with no one else could hold on.
Giselle had been there when Solani aged out.
There when she graduated.
There when she got her first apartment.
There when she became a social worker because she wanted children like them to have one adult who listened.
She had been Solani’s first family.
Her only family before Issy.
She could not be dead on the side of a mountain while Solani had been sitting downtown discussing somebody else’s crisis.
“I just talked to her yesterday,” Solani cried. “She called me yesterday.”
One of the officers crouched near her, speaking gently, but Solani could not hear the words over the memories crowding her mind.
Giselle at twelve in matching Christmas pajamas.
Giselle crying on her wedding day.
Giselle placing Issy in Solani’s arms and whispering that she was an aunt now.
Across the room, Saint had not moved.
He stared toward the dark window behind the desk, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. The officer said something about identification, the vehicle, and additional information they would receive later.
Saint heard none of it clearly.
His brother was dead.
Sai, who called him when he needed help but refused money unless Saint forced it on him.
Sai, who had taken the house keys and hugged him while calling him crazy for buying an estate as a wedding gift.
Sai, who never approved of the way Saint lived but never stopped loving him because of it.
His little brother was dead, and Saint had not been there.
There was no enemy to find.
No threat to remove.
No amount of money that could change what had happened.
Only ice.
A failed brake.
A mountain road.
Saint turned and walked toward the door.
Officer Graham stepped forward. “Mr. Whiteford—”
Saint opened it without answering.
Issy was still in the living room with Leigh, sitting on the floor now with her stuffed rabbit in her lap. She looked up when Saint entered.
“Unca Saint.”
He crossed the room and lowered himself onto the couch.
Issy climbed into his lap without being asked.
Saint wrapped both arms around her and stared ahead while she settled against his chest. She smelled like strawberry shampoo, lotion, and the house his brother was supposed to walk back into.
“Daddy coming?” she asked.
Saint’s jaw tightened.
He pressed his mouth against the top of her head but could not make himself answer.
Inside the study, Solani forced air into her lungs until the room stopped spinning. The officer helped her stand, and she wiped at her face with both hands, though the tears kept coming.
She wanted to stay on the floor.
She wanted to scream until somebody told her there had been a mistake.
Then she heard Issy’s voice through the closed door.
“Mommy coming?”
Solani closed her eyes.
Issy.
Giselle’s baby was sitting in the next room, still waiting for parents who would never come home.
Solani straightened slowly.
She thanked the officer even though she did not know why, then walked out of the study with one hand against the wall for support.
Saint sat on the couch holding Issy against him. His face was blank, but his arms were wrapped so tightly around the little girl that Solani could see the grief in every rigid line of his body.
Issy lifted her head when Solani approached.
“TT sad?”
Solani lowered herself beside them.
“Yes, baby.”
“Why?”
The truth sat inside Solani’s throat, too large and cruel to give to a two-year-old who still believed every person who left eventually returned.
She looked at Saint.
For the first time that morning, he looked back at her.
They barely knew each other. Two birthday parties, a handful of polite words, and stories passed through the people they had both just lost.
But in that moment, they understood the same thing.
Issy had no idea that her entire world had changed.
She only knew that her mommy and daddy were late.
Solani reached for her, and Issy shifted between them, keeping one hand curled into Saint’s coat while pressing her other palm against Solani’s wet cheek.
“Mommy and Daddy had an accident,” Solani whispered.
Issy watched her.
“They got hurt really bad, baby.”
“Doctor fix?”
Solani’s face crumpled again.
Saint looked away.
“No,” Solani said, forcing the word past the pain in her throat. “The doctors couldn’t fix them.”
Issy frowned as if Solani had said something that did not make sense.
“They coming home after?”
Solani covered the little hand against her cheek with her own.
“No, baby.”
Issy stared at her for several seconds, then turned toward Saint.
“Daddy not coming?”
Saint swallowed.
He had faced men with guns, buried people whose deaths he had expected, and walked into rooms knowing somebody would not leave them alive.
Nothing had ever frightened him like his niece waiting for an answer.
He shook his head once.
Issy’s bottom lip trembled.
“Mommy too?”
Solani pulled her into her arms before she could ask again. Issy began crying because Solani was crying, still too young to understand death but old enough to feel the terror moving through the adults around her.
Saint placed one hand against Issy’s back.
The three of them remained there on the couch while snow fell outside and police moved quietly through the house.
Issy cried for parents who had promised to return before morning.
Solani held the last piece of the sister she had loved since she was eleven.
Saint stared across the living room his brother would never enter again, one hand resting on the child Sai had trusted him to protect.
None of them knew about the documents waiting inside the attorney’s office.
They did not know that by the following morning Solani and Saint would be asked to sign their names beneath a future neither had chosen, or that the house around them would become the home they were expected to share.
They only knew that Giselle and Sai were gone.
And when Issy reached for both of them through her tears, neither let her go.
