Seventeen-year-old Maeve’s life fractured in an instant. One minute she was sharing laughter with her mother in their car, the next came blinding headlights, screeching metal, and a silence more terrible than any sound. When she woke in a hospital bed, the antiseptic sting in her nose was nothing compared to the gut-punch realization: her mother was gone, and the stranger at her bedside was the father who’d abandoned her years ago.
The house Thomas brought her to might have looked like a home, but to Maeve it felt like a prison. Julia’s forced smiles and Ethan’s innocent giggles only deepened her isolation. She spent days locked in her room, haunted by nightmares where her mother’s laughter always turned to screams. The worst part? Her memories of the crash were fractured – she remembered her mother driving… didn’t she?
The courtroom revelation hit like a freight train. As Maeve stared at the drunk driver accused of causing the accident, sudden flashes returned – her own hands on the wheel, the panic, the terrible impact. The truth nearly crushed her until an unexpected moment with her father – his embrace, his quiet “It wasn’t your fault” – became the first fragile thread pulling her back from darkness.
