Chapter 2
Operating rooms always smell terrible.
Disinfectant, blood, and under it, the scorched-meat reek of tissue being burned away.
Dr. Farrow peeled off her bloody latex gloves and dropped them in the bin.
She didn't look at me.
She went to the window and cracked it, letting the cold air carry off the smell.
"You're healing better than I expected."
She slid a stainless-steel tray in front of me with a sharp little clink.
"Take the stitches out yourself."
I picked up the forceps and worked the sutures loose along my jaw, one by one.
Every pull was skin tearing open into something new.
I didn't cry out. I didn't cry at all. I just stared into the mirror.
The woman looking back at me was a complete stranger.
Higher cheekbones. A straighter nose. Even the corners of my eyes had been subtly reshaped.
The old Sabine was gone. Erased.
Dr. Farrow turned, dug a stack of documents out of a drawer, and dropped them on the table.
"A new birth certificate. A social security card. And a savings account with three thousand dollars already in it."
She tapped the blue folder.
"Your name is Wren Ellery. You spent three years at a private care facility in Ireland."
"That's your entire history now."
I picked up the papers.
They were real enough to be cruel.
Dr. Farrow crossed to the television and pressed play.
It was a clip from the local society channel.
The camera cut to the reception hall of the Ravenel estate.
Alaric stood there in an impeccably tailored black suit, a glass of red wine in his hand, head bowed just so for the cameras.
His expression was pinned precisely between "grieving" and "bravely carrying on."
"Sabine may be gone," his voice came through the screen, low and rough, "but life has to go on. Especially for Posy."
The shot swung.
Delphine walked into frame.
She was wearing a velvet gown of mine I'd never even had the chance to wear. Around her neck hung the emerald pendant my mother had left me.
She looked exactly like the lady of the house.
Delphine crouched down and pulled Posy into her arms, performing the perfect image of a devoted mother for the lens.
"Posy needs a fresh start," she said, tenderly fixing my daughter's hair. "I'll take care of her the way her mother would have. I'll give her all the love in the world."
Posy flinched in her arms. There was no light in those eyes. She looked like a doll someone had drained the soul out of.
My fingers clenched around the chart in my hand.
Alaric hadn't just taken my house and stolen my life's work. Now he was packaging another woman up as my daughter's "mother."
A sharp pain detonated in my chest.
I looked at Dr. Farrow.
She was leaning against the doorframe, holding an envelope. A public job posting from the Ravenel estate.
"The Ravenel Group is looking for a live-in nanny. Strict requirements. Full background check, even."
She pushed the notice across to me, her tone flat, like she was talking about tomorrow's weather.
"They want someone professional, cold, and not too fond of talking."
"Wren Ellery's background is airtight. No holes."
"So. You can go on being a ghost."
"Or you can take this reference, and walk into that house tomorrow to apply."
I lifted my head.
On the screen, Delphine kissed Posy's forehead again.
I set the forceps down and picked up the letter.
"I'm going home."
I said it softly.
But I knew what it meant: Alaric and Delphine's endgame had just started its countdown.
I put on my coat and pushed open the door to the outside world.
The rain was coming down hard.
I didn't bother with an umbrella. I walked straight into it.
I wasn't Sabine anymore.
I was Wren Ellery.
And I was coming to take my daughter home.