Chapter 2 - The Echoes of Audrey
I spent the next three days in a fever dream. I kept Lily and her brother, Sam, in the guest wing. My security team was frantic, running background checks on every person Maria had ever known, but the results were clean. Lily was just a girl from the city, born in a charity hospital, with no ties to my enemies.
Yet, I couldn't stop the movement in my foot. It happened every time Lily sang. She didn't sing nursery rhymes; she hummed melodies that Audrey used to whistle while she gardened.
"Maria," I called out on the fourth morning, my voice echoing through the dining hall.
My housekeeper appeared, her face pale. She had been terrified for her children’s lives, but she had stayed. "Yes, Mr. Marino?"
"Where did Lily learn those songs?"
Maria hesitated, her eyes darting toward the hallway where Lily was playing with a set of wooden blocks. "She’s always had a... strange way of knowing things, sir. She talks to the birds. She tells me what the weather will be before the radio says it. I thought it was just a child's imagination."
"It's not imagination," I muttered.
I wheeled myself to the guest wing. Lily was sitting on the floor, stacking blocks into a tower that defied the laws of physics. She didn't look up when I entered.
"She’s not here, is she?" I asked. "Audrey. She didn't send you from beyond the grave."
Lily paused, a block frozen in mid-air. She turned to me, and for a split second, her eyes weren't the eyes of an eight-year-old. They were ancient. "She's not gone, Caleb. She's just... moved. Like a secret you haven't figured out how to tell yet."
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She leaned forward, her hand touching the metal of my wheelchair. "You stopped walking because you decided your life stopped when hers did. You didn't have an injury, Mister. You had a prison."
I felt the air rush out of my lungs. The doctors had called it 'hysterical paralysis'—a condition the mind creates to punish the body for surviving when others didn't. I had dismissed it as malpractice for years. But looking at her, I realized I had been the one keeping myself in the chair.
