Before I could say anything, Whitney’s eyes had already moved to Alisa’s face with that quiet, asuring look she had calm on the surface, reading everything underneath.
Alisa settled beside and took my hand warmly. "I’ve noticed you haven’t been eating well. Grandpa and Uncle Lewis are worried they’ve probably already figured it out, so there’s no need to hide it. When I was pregnant, the exact sa thing happened to . No symptoms at first, and then suddenly nauseous every single day. It got better after the first three months, thankfully."
"I can barely handle anything with oil in it right now," I said, keeping my smile easy and apologetic. "I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you."
It wasn’t the real reason, of course. Outside of Jeffrey, Lewis, and Whitney, I wasn’t eating anything I hadn’t watched being prepared myself. Lewis had brought in a chef he trusted completely, and I used the pregnancy as a polite excuse to decline everything else. It wasn’t paranoia. It was just sense.
Alisa’s face lit up anyway. "How far along are you? My baby will have soone to grow up with!" She pressed her hands together with genuine delight. "It’s funny how things work out. When you were with my brother, I always thought he didn’t deserve you. Now you’re not just my sister-in-law you’re family. Feels like fate."
"It does," I agreed.
"Since this is your first ti, you probably don’t know everything yet. Ask anything. Oh and I’ll send over so oil for you later."
I blinked. "What kind of oil?"
"For stretch marks. You’re young and you’re beautiful you don’t want to end up covered in marks after the baby cos. It could affect things between you and Lewis. n say they don’t mind, but trust , they notice."
I laughed quietly at that. "Alright. I’ll trust you."
"We’re family. Of course you should."
Once she left, Whitney reached over and moved the bowl of chicken soup Alisa had brought to the far side of the table. "Don’t drink that, Elena."
"I wasn’t going to."
It wasn’t long before a small delivery arrived from Alisa pregnancy skincare products, a couple of essential oils, a few parenting books. I thanked her through the door, ntioned I was tired and needed to rest, and she didn’t push. The mont the room was quiet again, I handed everything to Theo without fanfare.
Lewis ca ho as the sun was going down. I leaned into him the second he walked through the door, completely drained. "My appetite’s still off, but I threw up less today and managed to eat a little more than yesterday."
He patted my head like I’d done sothing impressive. "You’re amazing, Elena."
"The skincare things Alisa sent I gave them to Theo for testing."
"Good thinking."
"Any word on Wisteria?"
Lewis’s expression settled into sothing careful. "Nothing yet. No sign of her crossing in or out of Jaford or Snowville through any official route."
"She could have used a false identity."
"That’s possible. There’s sothing else the injuries on Randy’s body were made with a surgical knife."
A surgical knife. The na ca to imdiately. "Luther. He’s an orthopedic surgeon. He said he was performing surgery that night could it have been him?"
He had appeared too many tis in too many places. That pattern still bothered .
"I already flagged it to Captain Tucker. He pulled the hospital’s surveillance. Luther did perform surgery that night, but the timing doesn’t work there’s only a ten-minute gap between the end of his surgery and the victim’s estimated ti of death. Ten minutes isn’t enough to travel from the hospital to that alley and do what was done to that body."
"So it wasn’t Luther." I sat with that. "Wisteria?"
"Based on everything gathered at the scene, the evidence points to a woman."
Not Vito. Not Luther.
Had she really gone to all that trouble the beheading, the delivery, the ssage just to frighten ? Just to make feel watched?
"Stop turning it over," Lewis said, reading my face. "Stay ho, rest, and focus on the baby. I’ve already got soone watching Luther."
"You’re right. Nothing matters more than this child right now."
His phone buzzed. He checked it and looked up. "Test results ca back on the skincare products. Everything is clean normal ingredients, no problems."
I let out a slow breath. "I was being too careful."
Lewis touched my face gently. "There is no such thing as too careful right now. Stay alert, Elena. Don’t let your guard down, even with people who feel like family."
I looked at him. "I trust you completely."
He smiled small and real. That was enough.
..
Days passed. The search for Wisteria turned up nothing. Lewis had placed people near Silas’s burial site, knowing that if she was alive and in any state to act on her grief, she would eventually appear there. She didn’t. She had gone underground completely, vanished so thoroughly it was as if she had never existed except for that one ssage, sitting in my phone like a splinter I couldn’t reach.
I will always be watching you.
Lewis was relentless in making sure I rested. After more than a week, I could see the difference in the mirror a little more color in my face, a little more fullness. The nausea was still there, but it had started to find a rhythm I could work around. Small als. Slow mornings. Simple food.
Whitney was a different story.
Every day without news about the Blackwells took sothing from her. She asked Lewis for updates every single morning, and every morning the answer was the sa. I watched the hope drain out of her face a little more each ti, and I didn’t know how to stop it. She was always delicate in ways she worked hard not to show. But this this was wearing her through.
She knew. Sowhere underneath all the waiting, she knew that the longer the silence stretched, the less likely it was that anyone had survived that sea. She just couldn’t bring herself to land on it.
The thunder woke just past three in the morning.
I lay still for a mont, listening to the heavy spring rain hit the windows, then noticed the light still on in the study. Lewis was still at his desk, mid-way through a video conference it was dayti in Jaford, and the Hale business didn’t adjust its hours for anyone. He was carrying his own responsibilities, the Hale accounts, and the ss Bill had left behind in my subsidiary, all at once, without complaint. I stood in the doorway for a mont watching him and decided not to interrupt.
I drifted to the veranda instead, pulling a light wrap around my shoulders and letting the cool night air clear my head. The rain would pass. Spring always kept its promises eventually. I was standing there quietly, holding onto that thought, when I saw her.
Whitney was on the swing in the yard below, completely soaked, rain pouring over her like she had simply stopped noticing it was there. She was sitting perfectly still, her head down, her hands loose in her lap.
I grabbed an umbrella and went downstairs.
She heard my footsteps on the path and turned. For one split second, sothing crossed her face sothing open and desperate and reaching. "Vito "
Then she saw . The expression collapsed. "Oh. It’s you, Elena."
She scrambled to her feet imdiately, shifting into concern. "You shouldn’t be out here the path’s wet, you could slip. Go back inside."
I held the umbrella over her and didn’t move. "You know it’s raining. You’re standing in it anyway. Why?"
"I couldn’t sleep," she said quietly. "I ca out to clear my head. I’m sorry."
"How long has the sleeping been a problem?"
She looked away. "Since I heard about the Blackwells."
Her face was wet rain and sothing else mixed together in a way she wasn’t bothering to hide anymore. I exhaled slowly. "Whitney. Tomorrow I’m going to have Theo arrange for you to see soone a professional. You can’t keep doing this to yourself." I kept my voice gentle but steady. "Whether Vito is gone or not, the person he loved most was you. In the end, he let you go because he wanted you to have a good life. This " I gestured at her, soaked and hollow-eyed in the middle of the night, " this would break his heart."
Whitney looked at with eyes so tired they barely held anything. "He’s gone, Elena," she said softly. "The dead don’t know anything."
"Whitney "
"I’m okay." She said it the way people said it when they absolutely were not. "Just tired. A good night’s sleep will fix it."
She turned and walked back inside, her wet clothes leaving small, quiet prints on the floor, and slipped under her covers without another word.
I stood there for a mont after she was gone. Vito was gone. Whitney was still here, still breathing. But sothing in her had gone quiet in a way that sleep alone was never going to reach.
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