Chapter 3

Lora's POV

Once I was home, I locked the door behind me, wrapped myself in a blanket, and curled up on the bed, still trembling.

My phone lit up with a social media notification.

I opened it. Shea had just posted a grid of photos.

She looked polished and done up, wearing several different outfits, posing in various ways against the backdrop of a rooftop city skyline at night.

Her caption read: "Someone spent the whole evening taking photos of me. Ran his phone battery down to zero. You've worked hard."

I stared at that line for a long moment, and felt something crack quietly in my chest.

So that was it. His phone had died because he'd been out there photographing Shea all night.

While I was being followed, not knowing if I was going to make it home safe, he was worrying about running out of battery for her.

I reached up to wipe my face. My fingers came away damp.

I let out a quiet, humorless laugh, then screenshotted the post and saved it.

A while later, once Xander had apparently found a charger, he called.

"What did you need earlier?"

My voice was still slightly unsteady. "Nothing. Never mind."

He didn't notice anything off. Because it wasn't what he was paying attention to.

He moved on immediately.

"I've got to pull an all-nighter for work tonight. I won't be coming home."

I looked down, voice quiet. "Okay."

After we hung up, I went through every door and window in the apartment and made sure each one was locked before I got back into bed.

I didn't sleep well.

I dreamed the figures following me dragged me into an alley and I struggled and struggled but couldn't make a sound.

I dreamed Xander walked past me hand in hand with Shea, not turning back, telling me to stay away.

I dreamed I was small again, and my parents were lying in a pool of blood on that mountain road, and I ran to them screaming but couldn't wake them up.

Before dawn, I gave up sleeping.

I got out of bed with dark circles under my eyes, washed up, got dressed, and left.

Less than a month now. Then I'd be free of this.

I wanted to go somewhere far away, far outside the world Xander and Shea occupied.

Before I left, I wanted to go back to my hometown one last time.

To see the house I grew up in.

It was a remote place, a small, poor town, but beautiful. Hills and water everywhere, a stream running right through the middle of it. My grandmother used to say the town was very, very old.

The tragedy was that over the years the young people had all left, and the town had quietly fallen apart. The buildings had crumbled along with everything else.

I'd always had one wish: to one day restore those old buildings, preserve the town, and let the world know it existed.

Xander had once promised he would help me make that happen.

But we were getting divorced now. That promise had nothing to do with him anymore.

After a long journey, I finally stood at the edge of my hometown.

What I saw stopped me cold.

The town was rubble.

Every building had been leveled.

Bulldozers rumbled across the ground, churning up dust that hung in the air like a gray curtain.

"What are you doing? Who authorized this?"

I couldn't keep the tears out of my voice.

A man who looked like the site foreman came over and waved me off.

"Move along, move along! This is a construction site! You want to get hurt?"

I grabbed his sleeve.

"What company are you with? Why are you destroying this place?"

He yanked his arm and failed to shake me loose, then jabbed a finger irritably at the logo on the side of a bulldozer.

"You blind? We're with Hargrove Group. This whole area's being turned into an amusement park. Now get out of here."

Hargrove Group. Xander's company.

My hand slowly fell away. Every bit of strength left my body.

I remembered now. I had seen it on Shea's social media, Shea saying she wanted her own private amusement park.

But the world was enormous. Why here?

He knew this was my home. He knew what this place held for me. He had stood in front of me and promised, out loud, that he would protect it.

And he had torn it down to build Shea a playground.

Tears ran silently down my face, mixing with the dust.

I walked away from the ruins in a daze.

Beyond the edge of town, on a small slope, stood three modest graves.

My parents. My grandmother.

I couldn't hold it together anymore.

I sank down in front of them and wept.

"I couldn't protect our home. The pear tree is gone. The house is gone. I don't have a home left."

I was born in March, the year the pear tree in the yard bloomed full and white on every branch.

My parents weren't educated people. They named me Lora after the pear blossoms, hoping I would bloom just as freely.

That tree was older than I was. My grandmother had planted it the year she got married.

When I was little, my dad hung a rope swing from its branches. I would go higher and higher, and my mom would stand beside it laughing and telling me to slow down.

On summer evenings, my grandmother would pull a wooden chair under the tree and sew by the last light of day, stitching me a canvas backpack, murmuring that someday I would carry it to college.

When the pear blossoms fell, I would crouch in the grass and collect them one petal at a time, pressing them inside my textbooks as bookmarks.

That tree was my childhood. It held everything I meant when I said home.

Now my roots were gone.

I knelt by their graves and cried until my voice gave out and I had no tears left.

Finally, I wiped my face and pushed myself to my feet.

The wind came through. I drew in a long, slow breath.

I would not let this break me.

My parents and grandmother were gone. I would carry their share of living, and I would carry it well.