Chapter 12

When the handcuffs closed around her wrists, Evelyn finally lost control.

She pulled away from the officer and shouted at my parents.

“How can you put all the blame on me?”

“If you had truly trusted her and loved her, how could my plan have worked?”

The room fell silent.

Evelyn turned toward Adrian.

“Every time she tried to explain, you chose not to believe her.”

“You were the ones who pushed her away first. Now you stand here pretending to regret it. You make me sick.”

No one argued with her.

No one could.

Evelyn was the one who hired men to kidnap me and burn me alive.

But my family had ended my final calls for help with their own hands.

The police led her out of the room.

Camera flashes followed her until the doors closed behind her.

Six months later, the court delivered its verdict.

Evelyn was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping, arson, and murder.

Martha was also sentenced for helping arrange the crime, falsifying identities, and illegally switching the two babies years earlier.

The Hart family donated all the inheritance rights that should have belonged to me.

They used the money to create a foundation that helped foster children locate their relatives and escape illegal placements.

They named the foundation after me.

I no longer needed it.

My grave was outside the city.

When spring arrived, my mother came to visit with the notebook titled Home.

My father came too.

He had kept the record of my final call.

The call had lasted forty-three seconds.

He had never deleted it.

Adrian arrived last.

He placed the agreement ending the engagement in front of my headstone.

The paper had turned yellow with age.

My signature was still visible in the bottom right corner.

My mother crouched down and wiped the dust from my headstone.

“Claire, I cleaned your room. I changed the plaque on the door too.”

She paused.

“No one will ever make you move out again.”

“Please come back.”

My father stood behind her.

After a long silence, he spoke quietly.

“Come home, Claire.”

I looked at them and remembered the day I first entered the Hart estate three years earlier.

I had truly believed I finally had a home.

I waited for my mother to hug me.

I waited for my father to believe me.

I waited for Adrian to listen to my explanation.

In the end, I waited inside the fire for them to save me.

None of them came.

Now they were finally asking me to come home.

But I had already died in that fire.

I could never go home again.