Chapter 10 - The Daughter I Buried
Cora’s world smelled like dust and lilies.
I knew it was hers before anyone told me.
There are griefs you recognize even when they belong to another version of you.
I crossed while holding Lily’s old school picture.
Rachel had sent me a photograph of it because I asked for something Cora could not possibly control.
Lily at seven.
Front tooth missing.
Purple sweater.
Hair cut crooked because she had decided she could trim her own bangs.
I pressed my thumb to her face and whispered, “Come back to me.”
The room changed.
I was standing in a hallway.
My hallway.
But silent.
No shoes by the door.
No backpack on the stairs.
A framed photograph hung on the wall.
Lily.
Fourteen years old.
Same brown eyes.
Same stubborn mouth.
Black ribbon in the corner.
My knees gave out.
“No.”
Under the photograph was a date.
2012–2026.
“No.”
I crawled toward it.
A funeral program lay on a side table.
LILY ANNE MORGAN.
BELOVED DAUGHTER, SISTER, FRIEND.
I made a sound I did not recognize.
Someone came running.
Daniel.
He stopped when he saw me.
This Daniel looked older.
Not by years.
By damage.
“Claire?”
I reached for him.
He stepped back.
That hurt, even though I knew he was not mine.
“Where is she?”
His expression hardened.
“Don’t.”
“Where is Lily?”
“You know where she is.”
“I’m not your Claire.”
He laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
“I’m serious.”
“So are the doctors.”
I stood.
“Cora.”
His face changed.
“What did you call yourself?”
“Not me. Her.”
He went completely still.
I pointed at my own face.
“The Claire who lives here. Does she call herself Cora?”
Daniel stared.
“How do you know that name?”
My heart pounded.
“Because she took my life.”
He sat down slowly.
For the first time, he looked at me instead of through me.
“What life?”
“Lily is alive.”
His face broke.
I regretted the words immediately.
“Don’t.”
“She is alive where I come from.”
“Stop.”
“Noah too.”
He stood so quickly the chair tipped over.
“Get out.”
“Where is Noah here?”
He turned away.
“Daniel.”
“He lives with me.”
“Where?”
“My sister’s tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t let Claire near him.”
The cruelty of that sentence hit me.
“What happened?”
“You know.”
“I don’t.”
He stared at me, then laughed once.
“You really are different.”
“Tell me.”
He paced to the window.
“Lily called her mother from a party in Evanston.”
My stomach clenched.
“She wanted a ride.”
I closed my eyes.
Daniel continued.
“Claire was working.”
“What work?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“She had a presentation the next morning. She and I were already separated. She thought Lily was trying to manipulate her.”
I whispered, “No.”
“She told Lily to get a ride with someone else.”
My hands shook.
“Who drove?”
“A seventeen-year-old boy.”
I knew before he said it.
“Crash?”
Daniel nodded.
“Black ice. He survived. Lily didn’t.”
The room seemed to lose oxygen.
I sat down because my legs would not hold me.
“In my world she’s alive.”
“Good for you.”
There was no anger in his voice now.
Only emptiness.
“What happened after?”
“Claire blamed me. I blamed her. Noah stopped sleeping. Mom made everything worse.”
“Judith?”
“She said Lily would still be alive if Claire had been a better mother.”
I flinched.
Of course Judith found the cruelest possible sentence.
“Was that true?”
Daniel’s eyes filled.
“No.”
I looked up.
“She made a terrible decision. One terrible decision. But we had both told Lily to be more independent. I had ignored her call two nights earlier because I was with a client. We were all tired. Angry. Ordinary.”
He wiped his face.
“That’s what makes it unbearable.”
“Why did Noah leave her?”
“He didn’t at first.”
“What happened?”
“Claire became obsessed with fixing things.”
“How?”
“She started talking about other lives.”
My pulse jumped.
“She had already crossed?”
“I thought she was losing her mind.”
“What did she do?”
“She kept asking Noah questions. ‘Would you love me if Lily were alive?’ ‘Would you choose me if Dad wasn’t here?’”
I felt sick.
“She wanted him to prove she was still his mother.”
“He was nine.”
“What happened?”
“She took him from school without telling me.”
My body stiffened.
“Kidnapped him?”
“She said she was taking him somewhere we could be a family again.”
“Where?”
“Lake Shore Drive.”
Of course.
“The bridge?”
Daniel stared.
“How do you know?”
“She crossed.”
He sat down.
“She disappeared in front of Noah.”
My breath stopped.
“He saw it?”
“Yes.”
“What happened when she came back?”
“She didn’t.”
“How long?”
“Seven months.”
My skin went cold.
Cora had been traveling for at least seven months.
Daniel continued.
“Different versions came back. One for ten minutes. One for a day. One didn’t know Noah. One screamed when she saw Lily’s picture.”
“That may have been me just now.”
He looked at me.
I understood suddenly how monstrous this had been for him.
A grieving man repeatedly confronted by his wife’s face and none of her continuity.
“Did Cora ever return?”
“Three weeks ago.”
I froze.
“That recently?”
“She came into the kitchen at three in the morning.”
“What did she say?”
“That she had found them.”
My blood ran cold.
“Found who?”
“Both children.”
I stood.
“What else?”
“She said there was a world where Lily and Noah were alive, Daniel still lived at home, and Claire was miserable enough to leave the door open.”
I could not breathe.
My world.
“She planned this.”
Daniel looked at me.
“She said she had been watching it for months.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“She sabotaged me.”
“Maybe.”
My job.
Vanessa.
Judith.
The fights.
The wish.
How much had been mine?
How much had been engineered?
“Did she say how she chooses a world?”
Daniel nodded.
“She said she can’t force the first crossing.”
“Then what can she do?”
“She can make another Claire want to leave.”
I felt sick.
Cora had not waited for my marriage to break.
She had helped break it.
“What did you do when she told you?”
“I begged her not to go.”
“For Noah?”
“For herself.”
His voice broke.
“She is still my wife.”
That sentence shocked me.
After everything.
He still loved her.
Or the person she had been before grief turned love into hunger.
“Daniel, she is hurting my children.”
His face hardened.
“Then stop her.”
“How?”
He looked at Lily’s funeral photograph.
“Make her remember this room.”
The lights flickered.
I knew I was leaving.
I grabbed his arm.
“What does that mean?”
“She doesn’t talk about Lily anymore. She talks about replacing her.”
“Replacing Lily?”
“No.”
He looked directly into my eyes.
“Replacing the mother who failed her.”
The room folded.
I returned to Ethan’s apartment with Lily’s school photograph still in my hand.
My phone was buzzing.
A text from Cora.
I opened it.
A photograph of my daughter sleeping in her bed.
Under it, Cora had written:
SHE’S STARTING TO FORGIVE ME.
I typed back before I could stop myself.
I SAW YOUR LILY.
The typing bubble appeared.
Stopped.
Appeared again.
Then nothing.
For ten minutes, no message came.
Finally:
DON’T YOU EVER GO THERE AGAIN.
I stared at the screen.
May you like
For the first time, I had found something Cora feared more than losing my life.
Remembering her own.
