Aria's POV
The coffee pot slipped from my hand.
I watched it fall, almost in slow motion, as my manager Jerry's voice exploded across the diner. "Bennett! Table seven's been waiting fifteen minutes!"
The pot shattered. Brown liquid spread across the white tiles like blood.
My hands were shaking again. They'd been shaking all morning, and I didn't know why.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, dropping to my knees. Glass bit into my skin as I tried to pick up the pieces. "I'm so sorry."
"That's coming out of your paycheck," Jerry snapped. "And you're covering Sarah's shift tonight. Don't even think about saying no."
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell him I had a four-year-old daughter waiting for me. That I'd already worked six days straight. That my body felt like it would collapse any second.
Instead, I nodded. "Yes, sir."
Because people like me didn't say no. People like me just survived.
I finished my shift in a fog, mixing up orders and apologizing so many times the words lost meaning. By the time I clocked out at three, my feet were screaming and my vision was blurry from exhaustion.
The daycare closed at five-thirty. I had exactly two hours to pick up Lily, feed her dinner, and get her to bed before I had to be back at the diner. Two hours to be a mom instead of a machine.
My hands still wouldn't stop shaking as I drove.
Lily ran to me the moment I walked into Little Sunshine Daycare, her pigtails bouncing. "Mommy! I made you a picture!"
She held up a drawing of two stick figures—one big, one small—holding hands under a rainbow. My heart cracked open.
"It's beautiful, baby." I lifted her into my arms, breathing in her strawberry shampoo smell. For just a moment, everything else disappeared.
"Mrs. Bennett?" Miss Rachel, the daycare teacher, approached with a tight smile. "You're late on this month's payment. If we don't receive it by Friday—"
"I'll have it," I said quickly. "I promise."
Another promise I didn't know how to keep.
Lily chattered the whole drive home about finger painting and snack time. I made the right sounds, asked the right questions, but my mind was spinning with numbers. Rent. Utilities. Daycare. Food. The hospital bill from Lily's ear infection last month.
I was drowning, and nobody could see me going under.
Our apartment building looked even more run-down in the afternoon light. Peeling paint. Cracked steps. But it was ours, and it was safe. That's all that mattered.
"Can we have mac and cheese?" Lily asked as we climbed the stairs.
"Of course, princess."
Our mailbox was stuffed full—mostly bills I couldn't afford to open. I grabbed the stack with one hand while holding Lily's hand with the other.
Something fell out.
A postcard.
It landed face-up on the floor, and my heart stopped.
The picture showed Pinehaven Cliffs at sunset, the ocean stretching endlessly beyond the rocks. I knew those cliffs. I'd spent every summer there as a teenager, laughing and dreaming and believing life would always be that simple.
But it was the back of the postcard that made my blood run cold.
I bent down slowly, Lily's hand slipping from mine as I picked it up with trembling fingers.
The handwriting was elegant, looping, distinctive. I'd seen it a thousand times on birthday cards and late-night notes passed during boring classes.
"I never left. Come find me. —K"
The world tilted sideways.
"Mommy? What's wrong?"
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't process what I was seeing.
Because Kira was dead.
Kira Walsh, my best friend since kindergarten, had died five years ago in a house fire. I'd gone to her funeral. I'd watched them lower her casket into the ground. I'd cried until I couldn't cry anymore.
This couldn't be real.
"Mommy, you're scaring me."
I forced myself to look at Lily, forced a smile that felt like broken glass. "It's okay, baby. Mommy just... remembered something. Let's get inside."
My hands shook so badly I could barely get the key in the lock. Once inside, I turned on cartoons for Lily and stumbled to the kitchen, the postcard clutched in my fist.
I stared at it under the harsh fluorescent light. The handwriting was perfect—the way Kira always made her K's with that extra curl, the way she dotted her i's with little circles instead of dots.
Nobody else wrote like that.
But Kira was dead. Dead people didn't send postcards.
Unless...
My mind raced through possibilities, each one more terrifying than the last. A cruel prank? But who would do something so evil? Marcus? My ex-husband had done terrible things, but this seemed too elaborate even for him.
Or maybe I was losing my mind. Maybe the exhaustion and stress had finally broken something in my brain. Maybe I was seeing things that weren't there.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
My finger hovered over the screen. Every instinct screamed at me not to open it.
I opened it.
A photo loaded slowly. My breath caught in my throat.
It was Kira—or someone who looked exactly like her. Same red hair. Same green eyes. Same tiny scar above her left eyebrow from when we fell off our bikes in third grade.
She was standing in front of a dark building I didn't recognize, holding today's newspaper.
Today's date.
Below the photo, three words appeared:
"Midnight. Come alone."
The phone slipped from my hand and clattered onto the counter.
This wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible.
But what if it was?
What if Kira was alive?
And if she was alive... what else had been a lie?