The glass nearly slipped from my hand when Sophie said it.
“Mommy…”
Her small fingers tightened around Marcus’s shirt.
“That’s Daddy.”
For a second, I thought I had misunderstood her.
Music drifted across the pool.
Someone laughed near the bar.
Water shimmered beneath the string lights.
But Sophie was no longer looking at any of it.
She was staring at the side of Marcus’s head.
More specifically—
behind his ear.
Marcus went pale.
Not confused.
Not amused.
Pale.
And that frightened me far more than my daughter’s words.
Because Sophie’s father had been dead for a year.
BEFORE THAT NIGHT
My name is Evelyn.
I was thirty-seven when all of this happened.
My husband, Daniel, had died from cancer twelve months earlier.
Our daughter Sophie had just turned four.
She still spoke about him as though he were away on a long trip.
Sometimes she asked when he would come home.
