Their version of events painted me as the reckless daughter and him as the convenient villain, but even that lie concealed something far worse.

Rachel stepped closer, her voice thin and shaking.

“You told them I was dead.”

My mother broke down in tears.

“No,” I said quietly. “They told me you were dead.”

Rachel looked at me as if I had struck her.

“What?”

My father dragged both hands over his face.

“This is not the time.”

“No,” I snapped. “This is exactly the time.”

Rachel’s eyes moved between us.

She looked older than thirty-three, as if the missing years had been carved into her skin one night at a time.

A scar cut through her left eyebrow, another pale line marked her jaw.

She wrapped her arms around herself as if she still lived somewhere cold.

“I was sixteen,” she whispered. “He took me from the church parking lot after choir practice. He showed his badge and said there had been an accident, that Mom needed me downtown.”

Her breath hitched.

“I believed him.”

Noah had stopped on the stairs.

He heard everything.

I should have sent him away.

I couldn’t move.

Rachel kept talking, like stopping would mean never speaking again.