Graves Lost Daughter

Cleo POV

“Mom?”

I blinked a few times and forced myself to focus on the endless, rain-soaked highway ahead.

“Yeah, baby?” I asked softly.

“Are we almost there?”

Tommy’s sleepy voice drifted from the backseat. I glanced at him in the rearview mirror, my chest tightening. His dark hair was messy from sleeping against the car door, and his face was still puffy from his nap. This book belongs to Lillipad0234 and is only available on Inkitt!

Wade’s face.

Sometimes, looking at Tommy hurt so much, I could barely breathe.

“Almost,” I lied gently. “Another thirty minutes.”

Beside him, Skylar snorted quietly.

“You said that like an hour ago.”

I smiled despite myself. “Did not.”

“Did too.”

Tommy groaned dramatically. “I’m starving.”

“There’s a diner coming up soon,” I promised. “We’ll stop there.”

That seemed to satisfy him for a few more minutes.

Rain tapped steadily on the windshield, and the wipers had squeaked for the last two hours, making me restless. I gripped the steering wheel tighter as another sign appeared through the fog.

Creek Wood – Population 4,312

Small town.

Fresh start.

New life.

That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway.

The truth was, I had no idea what I was doing.

Four months ago, I had a house, a husband, and stability. Bills were paid on time, and the future felt safe, even if life had never been perfect.

Now, everything we owned was crammed into my old Honda. I owed ten thousand dollars, and my kids were counting on me to keep us together, even when most days I could barely breathe.

Life could fall apart so quickly.

I swallowed hard against the sudden burn in my throat.

Wade had been gone for four months, and some mornings I still woke up reaching for him. I still expected him beside me. I still heard his laugh in my head.

People acted like grief got easier once you learned someone wasn’t perfect. Like finding out Wade had a gambling problem could erase fifteen years of love.

It didn’t.

It just made everything messier, because Wade wasn’t a bad person.

He was my best friend.

We met when we were fourteen. I’d just been dumped into my sixth foster home, carrying everything I owned in two trash bags and pretending I wasn’t scared all the time.

Wade was the quiet boy who sat behind the auto shop with a split lip and bruised ribs. He said he got them from “falling off his bike.”

I knew better.

Kids like us always knew the truth.

Wade had an abusive drunk for a father.

I had nobody. No parents. No family. Just one name.

Maria.

Maria. That was all I knew about the woman who gave birth to me and then disappeared forever. No last name, no photo, no answers.

Wade used to joke that we were two strays who found each other first.

Maybe he was right.

By sixteen, he was sneaking through my foster bedroom window almost every night. By eighteen, we stood in front of a judge, getting married with forty-three dollars in our shared bank account and no idea what we were doing.

A few months later, I got pregnant with Skylar.

Everyone expected us to fail. Maybe, by the numbers, we should have. But we loved each other enough to keep fighting.

Wade worked long hours as a mechanic while I finished school. We scraped by, struggled, and somehow built a life from nothing.

When Tommy was born four years later, Wade cried harder than I did, holding him for the first time.

He loved our children fiercely.

That’s why some of this still didn’t make sense. How could the man who kissed me goodbye every morning gamble away our mortgage payments? How could he hold me at night and hide debt collectors from me during the day?

I didn’t know about any of it until after the accident, the funeral, and the bank notices, when strangers started calling my phone demanding money I didn’t have.

The house was gone within weeks.

Everything we built disappeared right along with him.

A soft rustling sound pulled me from my thoughts.

Skylar sat curled against the window in Wade’s old grey sweater, sleeves hanging past her hands. Headphones covered her ears, and an old iPod rested in her lap like something precious.

At ten, she’d become too quiet lately, too watchful, and it broke my heart because she looked just like me.

Same honey‑brown hair.

Same green eyes.

Same face.

Sometimes, when she looked at me, it felt like seeing my younger self—the lonely foster kid who pretended she wasn’t scared of the world.

“You okay, bug?” I asked gently.

Skylar glanced at me before shrugging one shoulder. “You’re doing the worried thing again.”

“The worried thing?”

“You get this line right here.” She pointed at her forehead seriously.

I laughed. “Great. I’m aging rapidly at twenty-eight.”

“You’re basically ancient already.”

“Wow. Rude.”

That earned me the smallest smile.

God, I missed seeing her smile.

For weeks after Wade died, our house felt unbearably quiet. It was as if grief had moved in with us.

But this move?

This was supposed to help.

New town. New school. New memories. A chance to breathe somewhere Wade wasn’t in every corner, because staying had been slowly destroying me.

Every street reminded me of him. So did every grocery aisle. Every unpaid bill sat on the counter.

I couldn’t keep drowning there.

The teaching job at Creek Wood Elementary felt like fate when I found it online at two in the morning during another money panic.

Small town. Steady paycheck. Temporary teacher housing.

Hope.

It was a small, fragile hope, but it was enough to keep me going.

Rain kept falling as we drove deeper into town, under tall pine trees and thick mountain fog. Creek Wood looked like the kind of place people forgot existed.

Old storefronts. Flickering neon signs. Weathered buildings. Quiet.

The kind of quiet that felt heavy.

Tommy stirred awake just as a glowing diner sign appeared through the rain.

“Can we stop now?” he mumbled.

I smiled as I pulled into the parking lot. “Yeah, baby,” I whispered. “We can stop.”

Tommy was practically asleep again by the time we climbed out of the car.

Rain drizzled as I hurried around the car and opened the back door. Tommy reached for me with tired arms, and I lifted him onto my hip, even though my back ached from hours of driving.

Skylar climbed out beside us, pulling Wade’s sweater tighter around herself as she slipped the iPod into her pocket.

The diner glowed warmly against the dark, wet evening. Neon lights buzzed in the windows, and for the first time in days, I felt something inside me loosen a little.

Maybe because it looked normal.

Safe.

I could do safe.

“Come on,” I said softly. “Let’s get some food.”

A bell chimed overhead when I pushed open the diner door, and instantly the room went silent.

I hesitated as every head in the diner turned toward us. Heat crept up my neck under the sudden attention. A few older women near the counter stared openly, and a man halfway through lifting his coffee cup froze.

What the hell?

Tommy buried his face against my shoulder while Skylar moved closer to my side.

Then I noticed them.

Three men in leather jackets sat in the back corner near the windows. Large patches covered their backs and shoulders.

Devils Creek MC.

Bikers.

The biggest one had dark hair streaked with grey and a face shaped by hard years. Next to him, a younger blond man stared at me like he’d seen a ghost. But the man in the middle caught my attention.

Dark eyes.

Dark hair.

Broad shoulders.

He was calm in a way that felt dangerous.

His gaze locked onto mine with an intensity that should have made me uncomfortable. It should have scared me.

Instead, something strange settled low in my chest.

Not fear.

Not panic.

Safety.

Somehow, impossibly, I’d just walked into a room full of strangers and the tight knot in my chest loosened for the first time in months.

The dark-haired biker’s expression tightened just a little as his eyes moved over Skylar and Tommy before coming back to me.

The whole diner still felt frozen, and suddenly I had the overwhelming sense that walking into Creek Wood had changed everything.