Chapter 3

Abigail Cardenas POV:

Sleep didn't come. Their faces, their voices, Celena' s smug smile, Edgar' s pathetic guilt, Kody' s tear-stained face-they were all vivid, unwelcome invaders in my mind. Each memory was a spark, igniting the inferno of hatred that still smoldered within me. It was a dull ache most days, but tonight, it was a raging fire.

I needed to move, to do something, anything, to quiet the storm inside. My small room offered little to organize, but I started anyway, straightening the few books, folding my limited clothes. I pushed aside a stack of old magazines, and my hand brushed against something hard, hidden in the back of the small, dusty closet.

A forgotten box. Heavy, worn, taped shut. I pulled it out, grunting with the effort. As I lifted it onto the bed, the bottom gave way. The contents spilled onto the threadbare blanket, scattering across the mattress. Among them, a photo frame, old and wooden, clattered to the floor. The glass shattered with a sharp, sickening crack.

My breath hitched. My eyes fell on the image within the broken frame. A family photo. Edgar, Kody, and me. We were smiling, standing in front of a Christmas tree, garlands of light twinkling around us. A perfect, fabricated memory.

Kody. My Kody. My adopted son. The one I had loved with a ferocity that bordered on madness. He wasn't mine by blood, but he was mine by every other measure that mattered.

Edgar, in his early days, had been scarred by Celena' s first betrayal. He swore off children, claiming he couldn't bear the thought of more pain. But I had seen something else in him, a longing he couldn't admit. I had wanted a child, desperately, but life had dealt me a different hand.

One rainy afternoon, I found him. A tiny, abandoned baby, left on the steps of the local church. He was frail, malnourished, with a congenital heart defect that would require countless surgeries, a lifetime of care. Edgar had hesitated, worried about the cost, the whispers, the burden.

But I hadn't. Not for a second. I scooped up the tiny bundle, my heart overflowing with a fierce, protective love. I named him Kody, a name that meant 'helpful' and 'kind' in an old dialect I' d once studied. He was my purpose, my reason for being.

I fought for him, paid for his treatments, held his tiny hand through every painful procedure. I learned everything I could about his condition, became an expert in pediatric cardiology by necessity. Edgar, eventually, came around, but it was always my battle. My sacrifice. And Kody, in turn, clung to me, his small arms wrapped tightly around my neck, calling me "Mama" with a reverence that melted my heart. That was my greatest joy.

Then Celena came back. A ghost from Edgar's past, a siren who pulled him back into her orbit with practiced ease. She was everything I wasn't-flashy, ambitious, and utterly ruthless. She saw me as an obstacle, Kody as a nuisance.

Edgar started working late, his excuses growing thinner, his eyes colder. Kody, too, changed. Celena, with her expensive gifts and whispered promises, slowly poisoned his mind. He started calling me "controlling," "overprotective." He grew resentful of the endless doctor's appointments, the watchful eye I kept on his fragile health. He wanted freedom, the kind of freedom Celena dangled like a shiny new toy.

I remembered one fight, me screaming, "Edgar, what is happening to us?!" Him, turning away, his shoulders hunched, "Nothing, Abigail. You're imagining things." His office door was always locked now, his phone glued to his hand. Kody stopped telling me about his day, instead spending hours with Celena, who showered him with attention and expensive gadgets. He even started calling her "Aunt Celena," a word that felt like a knife twisting in my gut.

My eyes burned, a fresh wave of tears threatening to spill. The jagged edge of the broken glass dug into my finger, a thin line of red blooming against my skin, staining the smiling faces in the photo. It was a physical echo of the pain in my chest. The broken glass, the shattered family, the blood seeping into the memory.

I remembered Kody's tenth birthday. He'd blown out the candles on his cake, his eyes bright with hope. "I wish," he' d said, "that we could be a family forever, Mama. Just us."

I laughed now, a bitter, broken sound that caught in my throat. Forever. What a naive wish.

With a choked sob, I snatched the photo up, the blood from my finger smearing across the image. I crumpled it in my hand, then tossed it into the small wastebasket in the corner. The crumpled faces stared up at me, accusing and mocking.

Just then, my phone buzzed. A text message. An unknown number.

You're invited to Kody's 18th Birthday Celebration. This Saturday. Astoria Ballroom.

My blood ran cold. Kody. His birthday. After all these years. And after Edgar and Celena's visit. It felt like a trap, another cruel twist of the knife. But a part of me, a small, foolish part, wondered if this was a chance. A chance to see him again, to understand. Or perhaps, a chance to finally, truly say goodbye.