Chapter 37
Ella
I keep seeing him.
On the floor.
The whiskey.
The wall.
The photos.
That room.
That girl.
I sit upright so fast my vision blurs. My heart starts racing for an entirely new reason. The photo on the wall in his secret room… the one he shoved me out of…
The little girl had two different colored eyes.
One brown.
One blue.
Just like Aurora.
Scarlett’s daughter.
My stomach flips. A cold sweat trickles down my back.
Could it be?
No… that’s insane. Right?
But I can’t unsee it. I know what I saw.
Hours later, I’m at the bakery in my office in full investigation mode on my laptop.
I don’t know what I expected when I typed Scarlett Hayes into the Facebook search bar. Maybe some warm family photos, maybe a new profile picture of her smiling with Aurora. Something that screamed happy mom vibes.
What I got instead was…strange.
Scrolling her wall felt like flipping through an abandoned scrapbook. There she was five years ago, standing next to her husband at the lake, wine in hand, captioned “forever us.” Vacation photos. Anniversary dinners. Smiles that looked real, not staged. And then…
Nothing.
The posts stopped like a car slamming on the brakes. The photos dried up. Her once-colorful wall became a series of birthdays with generic stock balloons, the occasional quote about “strength,” and then silence.
I leaned closer to the screen, my stomach doing that something’s not right flip.
Scarlett and her husband had split around that time.
I vaguely remembered the whispers about a messy divorce.
But why hadn’t she shared anything since?
Most people overshare. Most moms post their kids’ first everything.
And yet, here was Scarlett, a woman who had once posted her Starbucks orders — now acting like she didn’t exist online.
“Wow,” a voice says from behind me.
I jump, slamming the laptop half-shut. “Ashton!”
She grins, sauntering into the office with a coffee in one hand and her phone in the other. “I’m rubbing off on you. Who are you creeping on?”
I groan and open the laptop again. “It’s not that. I was looking at Scarlett’s profile.”
Ashton plops down in the chair across from me, raising her brows.
“Scarlett? As in Scarlett-Scarlett? Oh boy.” She shakes her head.
“Yeah, she was… off for years, you know. Used to be fun, used to come to things. Then—” She makes a dramatic deflating gesture with her hand.
“Pfft. She got weird. Depressed. Honestly? Half the time, I avoided talking to her because it was like walking into a thundercloud. But it’s nice to see her back to her old self. ”
I let out a long exhale.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “I need to tell you something.”
She squints. “That usually means something insane is coming.”
“Last night,” I say, “after the barbecue… I went back to Nathan’s place.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “You did?”
“Not like that,” I say quickly. “His door was open. I just wanted to make sure he was okay.”
“And?” she presses.
“And I walked into something that felt like a crime scene.”
She straightens.
“His entire living room,” I say, “was covered in papers. Photos. Maps. Printouts. Strings on the wall. Like a war room.”
Ashton’s expression shifts from curious to alert.
“He’s been looking for someone,” I continue. “A little girl. Missing.”
Her mouth parts slightly. “Ella…”
“And Ashton,” I say, my voice dropping, “the picture on the wall—his main one—the one everything was built around?”
I swallow.
“She had one brown eye and one blue eye.”
Her face goes completely still.
“Just like Aurora,” I whisper.
The room feels quieter. Thicker.
Ashton doesn’t answer right away. She’s thinking. I can see it in her eyes.
“Lots of kids have different colored eyes, right?” I continue quickly. “It’s rare, but it happens. And Scarlett adopted her. We all know that.”
Ashton slowly crosses her arms. “Yeah. She did.”
“So this can’t be the same little girl,” I say, more firmly now. “It doesn’t even make sense.”
“You said he’s been looking for her for years,” Ashton says.
“Yes.”
“And Aurora is… what? Six? Maybe Seven?”
“About that.”
“And you said his wall is still active. Like he hasn’t stopped looking.”
“Yes,” I say, irritation creeping in. “But that doesn’t mean—”
“That means the timeline actually does line up,” she says quietly.
I open my mouth. Close it again.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I insist. “That’s still not proof. That’s… pattern-hunting.”
Ashton tilts her head. “It’s literally my job to pattern-hunt.”
I sigh. “You’re doing the thing.”
“I am absolutely doing the thing,” she says. “Because this is the kind of coincidence that only looks like a coincidence until you realize it isn’t.”
I shake my head. “You’re jumping.”
“No,” she says. “I’m connecting.”
“That’s worse.”
“Ella,” she says gently, “I’m not saying Scarlett did anything. I’m saying that a man has been searching for a missing little girl for years, and a woman we know suddenly has a little girl the same age with the same extremely rare eyes. That’s not… nothing.”
I look away. “It still feels insane.”
“It feels insane because it is,” she says. “But insane things happen. Especially when people are desperate.”
“That’s not fair,” I say. “Scarlett’s not—”
“I’m not accusing her,” Ashton says quickly. “I’m saying we don’t pretend this is just random either.”
Anxiety flickers through me.
“This is probably still nothing,” I say.
Ashton’s voice is gentle, but firm. “It’s probably something.”
We stare at each other.
Neither of us likes that answer.
I push back from the desk, clutching my phone like a lifeline. “I can’t shake this. None of it adds up. I need to talk to someone who might know the answers.”
I scroll to the one number I always call when things stop making sense; phone in hand, thumb hovering over my mom’s contact. Finally, I press call.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she answers, chipper as always.
“Mom… I need to ask you something. It’s weird. It’s about Scarlett’s daughter.”
A pause. “Okay…”
“Do you have any photos of Aurora? From the family party? Or Scarlett? Anything?”
“No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“Can you look? Or ask around? Or, I don’t know, check online?”
“I can try, but… honey, what’s this about?”
“She said she adopted Aurora, right? From a foster agency?”
“Yeah. She mentioned one in Oregon, I think.”
“Can you do me a favor and call them? Just to… just to check?”
“Ella, that’s a big ask. You think Scarlett’s—” She pauses. “Honey, I know she’s always been a bit distant after everything that happened, but she’s a good person.”
“Please, Mom. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t feel something might be off.”
A beat of silence. “I’ll call you back,” she says.
I wait.
And wait.
An hour later, my phone rings.
I answer before the first ring finishes.
“There’s no record,” my mom says, voice tight. “I spoke to two different people at the agency. They have no record of any child named Aurora. Nothing matches. They have no records of Scarlett either.”
The air is sucked from my lungs.
I sit down on the floor.
It is her. It has to be.
I open my messages and type before I can second-guess it.
Ella: Hey. I need to talk to you.
Three dots appear. Then disappear. Then reappear.
Nathan: Please give me space.
Ella: It’s important. Please.
His reply comes instantly.
Nathan: Stop, Ella.
My hands shake. A knot forms in my chest.
That’s it. I’m done texting. I need him to look me in the eyes.
I storm out of my apartment and take the elevator up to the sixth floor. My heart pounds with each ding. I walk straight to his door and knock—not hard, but not gently either.
“Nathan? I need to talk to you.”
A few seconds pass before the door opens.
He looks… tired. Empty. Like whatever fire was in him has long since burned out.
“What, Ella?” he says, his tone flat and mechanical. “What do you need to say?”
I swallow. I wasn’t ready for how hard this would be. I draw a deep breath. “I know I wasn’t supposed to see that room. And I’m sorry I walked in. But I think it happened for a reason.”
He doesn’t react.
I continue, voice trembling. “I think… I think I may have found who you’re looking for.”
Silence.
Then a sharp laugh. Cold. Almost cruel. “You think you found my daughter?”
I open my mouth, but he cuts me off before any words emerge.
“I’ve had private investigators, detectives, cops, everyone looking for her for almost 3 years. And now, suddenly, you’ve just—what? Figured it out? Just like that?”
“Nathan—”
“What a pathetic attempt to manipulate this situation,” he snaps. “Unbelievable.”
“I’m not manipulating you.”
“I expected more from you, Ella.”
“Please, Nathan…”
“I never want to see you again.” His voice is low. Final.
And then the door slams shut in my face.
I stare at it.
Breathless. Speechless. Hollow.
Then I turn.
And I walk away.