Mei considered leaving again. Renée would have none of it. "You don't run from your life when life needs you," Renée said, stern and tender at once. The women formed a rotating schedule: grocery runs, doctor check-ins, and guard-checks at night. The pampering became ritual and armor.
One night Mei woke from a dream with the sound of a child laughing in a voice she did not recognize: a memory or a hint—she couldn't tell. She found a post-it stuck to the inside of the sonogram envelope: Beware Victor. No signature. No other clue.
Adrian, sleepless and skeletal, rented a small office two blocks from Renée's salon and paid a man to watch the store-fronts. He learned the baristas' names, bought a lemon tart in the mornings, and left a tip on a napkin with a single line: For Mei—please keep safe.
That morning the barista handed Mei a napkin with a slightly smudged note. She read it three times before she allowed the world to tilt at all: I will not leave you alone. I will fix this. —A.
The two of them did not speak. They had not honored the distance she wanted—but the gesture landed like a pebble in still water, sending waves outward.
In the weeks before the legality notice, Elena (a childhood friend of Mei's who had stayed out of the scandal) arrived with a battered ledger. It was small and bound in cheap leather. "If they say family papers are missing, they're lying," Elena whispered. "I kept what I could."
They poured over the ledger in Renée's backroom, where steam from a kettle blurred edges. The ledger contained ledgers: adoption entries, name redactions, and marginal scribbles—one in particular caught Mei's eye: a single faint stamp that matched a family crest she had seen on Eleanor's stationary.
Mei's stomach lurched. Someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to obscure a truth.
Cliffhanger: Elena folded the ledger to a page with a single sentence, written in a child's hand: "I remember the music and the man with cold hands." A doorbell ring froze them—two men stood outside asking whether Renée's salon rented rooms by the hour.