Innocently Stolen

Chapter 1

Elowyn seemed timid to most-soft-spoken, skittish, the kind of person who apologized when someone else bumped into her.

But the people she trusted and felt comfortable around?

They got the upgraded version: a gremlin made of quiet sarcasm, playful teasing, and sudden, inexplicable bursts of energy that seemed to surprise even her.

She enjoyed being a little menace sometimes.

Still, those parts stayed tucked away unless she felt truly safe.

Elowyn had always been small-small in the way she moved, small in the way she carried herself through crowded spaces, and, unfortunately, in her eyes, small in stature too. According to every doctor who had ever held a clipboard over her crib, she had been small from the very beginning.

She had been due shortly after the new year.

She arrived in the heart of fall instead.

Her father, Atticus, liked to tell the story gently, as if the past were something fragile that could easily bruise.

Eight weeks early, weighing even less than a small sack of flour, lungs too new to trust, heart fluttery as a sparrow.

She had spent the first few months of her life surrounded by machines that hummed and chirped, swaddled in warm lights that imitated sunlight.

Elowyn didn't remember any of it, but her body did.

It always did.

Even now, at twenty, her immune system behaved like a shy animal-easily startled, easily overwhelmed.

A sore throat could turn into a fever within hours.

A crowded bus could mean a week in bed. She always tried to carry a small bottle of hand sanitizer in her bag and avoided touching door handles when she could help it.

Her father told her she didn't have to be so cautious, but he still checked her temperature at the slightest sniffle.

He worried.

She let him.

It made them both feel better.

?

Elowyn understood people differently than most. She noticed patterns others often missed. Loud noises made her flinch. Bright lights made her blink too fast. Her hands fidgeted of their own accord whenever social expectations pressed too tightly around her chest.

High-functioning autism, a therapist had once called it.

A tidy label.

Too tidy.

Elowyn didn't think of herself in labels.

She thought of herself in sensations.

Soft fabrics. Predictable routines. The hum of Miss Loretta's old radio. A glass of apple juice. The gentle weight of a cat settling in her lap at the animal shelter. These were things she trusted-things that didn't ask her to change shape or pace.

Her father and brother understood her perfectly.

And her best friend Will-well, he understood her loudly, which was its own kind of comfort.

Her mother was a different story.

Her parents divorced when she was four, though she didn't like to describe it as such. It was more like her mother walking out on them, leaving her father to raise two kids under the age of twelve all by himself.

Her father never complained once.

He was a good man and an even better father.

At one point he worked four jobs just to put food on the table, and when her brother became old enough, he immediately got a job-on top of going to school-and would always set aside a few dollars to buy Elowyn whatever plushie or snack she wanted, then give the remainder of his check to their father for bills.

Of course, their father refused, saying, "I'm the parent. I need to be the one to provide for my kids." This wasn't said out of a big ego or even pride-more like a broken heart. How is it that I need financial help from my own teenage son, he often thought.

When her brother kept pushing, their father finally, reluctantly, gave in. This continued for years, up until recently, when the hospital debt from Elowyn's childhood was fully paid off.

And Elowyn felt horrible.

She blamed herself for the debt, even though she never should have.

Her brother Daniel-now a very successful lawyer-and her father finished paying it off about two years ago. But they would never be entirely free from medical bills with how easily Elowyn fell sick.

She felt like a burden even though both men constantly reassured her she was loved, and family is never a burden.

When she was younger, she didn't understand how much they had sacrificed for her. But as she got older, she saw her father doing all he could, juggling jobs, coming home at three, sometimes even four a.m.

She saw how her brother always struggled to keep his eyes open when she asked if he wanted to watch a Disney movie. Between studying to get into a good college and rushing to his job right after school, he was completely drained by the end of the day.

At one point, she tried to get a job to help out.

It wasn't because she was lazy or not smart enough-it was just that everything was too much.

She would be by herself for the first time outside her home for hours.

No Dad near her, no Daniel to help calm her down, no Will to crack jokes and distract her from overwhelm.

She would be all alone.

Still, one day, she forced herself to apply for a job at a local McDonald's. She sat through the interview and decided not to mention she was autistic in hopes of a higher chance at getting hired. She just masked like there was no tomorrow.

It worked.

She got the job.

And she didn't even last a day.

She served a man at the drive-thru a large Pepsi when he had clearly ordered a Diet Pepsi.

She had forgotten.

It ended with the man screaming in her face through the small window about being incompetent, while tears streamed down her cheeks. She began pressing her palms together in an effort to calm herself, only for the man to continue yelling, asking her if she was "retarded or something."

And that broke her.

She was taken back to the day her mother walked out.

The woman didn't even bother sparing Elowyn a single glance; she simply walked past her, mumbling under her breath, "I wanted a daughter, not a retard."

Then she left.

Elowyn had been so young, but the memory was burned into her brain.

Her mother always hated how she would fidget her hands or tug at her sleeves.

How Elowyn needed her food not to touch, and genuinely couldn't eat certain textures-and when she was forced by her mother, she'd throw it all up.

Elowyn could eat dino nuggets and mac cheese every day for the rest of her life and be the happiest girl in the world.

She used to wonder why her mother wanted her to be "normal" so badly.

Now she wondered why her mother couldn't love the daughter she actually had.

?

The bookstore café was one of her comfort places-a quiet little refuge that smelled like cinnamon and old pages.

Miss Loretta always kept the space warm, both in temperature and spirit.

The elderly woman let Elowyn volunteer whenever she felt up to it and never scolded her when she needed to slip into the storage room to breathe.

On the days she volunteered, Elowyn wandered through the aisles like a small ghost with good intentions-reshelving books, straightening displays, and wiping down tables. The work soothed her. It made sense in ways people often didn't.

This afternoon was no different.

Her father was somewhere in the back, fixing the light fixture that had flickered for nearly a month. Miss Loretta was upstairs resting her knees. And Elowyn had the shop to herself.

The quiet wasn't lonely.

It was familiar.

She liked familiar.

*

Kneeling on one of the rugs near the fiction shelves, Elowyn lined up a stack of new paperbacks. The soft fibers cushioned her knees as she pressed her palms lightly together-one of her grounding habits.

Some people squeezed stress balls.

Elowyn pressed her own hands.

Her therapist had once called it "self-regulation."

She called it comfort.

Her life was predictable-organized around routines, the people she trusted, and the spaces she classified as safe. She rarely met new people outside the shelter or the shop. She didn't seek change. Change usually meant discomfort.

But every future turning point had to start somewhere, with someone stepping through a door.

And the bell above that door just chimed.

Elowyn flinched-just a tiny jerk of her shoulders. Not fear, just surprise. The bell always startled her, even though she knew exactly what it sounded like.

The shop stayed quiet once the sound faded. Whoever entered didn't greet her or shuffle loudly. No chaotic energy. Just presence.

She stayed where she was for a moment, breath held, heartbeat tapping at her ribs like a curious visitor.

And she didn't know it yet-not on that quiet, ordinary afternoon, not while surrounded by leaning stacks of books and the soft hush of the place-but the woman who had just entered the shop...

...would become the largest, brightest change of her life.

The kind of change that didn't take away her comfort.

The kind that expanded it.

The kind that would eventually feel like home.