The night air outside the Regency felt like a slap. Not a cruel one—more like the sharp sting of waking up. The ornamental lamps along the drive cast long, thin shadows across the pavement, and my reflection in the restaurant’s mirrored windows looked like someone I barely recognized.
Hair hastily pinned up, smudges of black beneath eyes that had forgotten how to sleep, lipstick worn thin from biting my lip. I was Stephanie, apparently ex-daughter of the Harrisons, officially disowned in front of fifty relatives between the salad course and the main. For a moment I just stood there on the stone steps, my hand still curled loosely around the restaurant’s heavy brass handle, my mind replaying the last hour in fragments—Dad’s voice booming through the microphone, Mom’s brittle smile, the signed papers they thought I would obediently accept, the stranger’s face in the corner who wasn’t really a stranger at all.
Aunt Clara. Three weeks ago, if someone had told me any of this would happen, I would’ve laughed. Or more likely, shrugged and said something sarcastic, then gone back to my paints.
Back then, life was smaller, messier, but familiar. It was me, my quiet art studio, and the cabin. Always the cabin.
One month earlier, the studio was thick with the smell of oil paint and turpentine. Light slanted in through the cracked top windows, cutting dusty gold rectangles across the stained wooden floor. My newest canvas towered over me, taller than I was, a chaotic blur of color that wasn’t sure what it wanted to be yet—story of my life.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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