Chapter 5 The Shifting Sands

The morning after Aunt Caroline's visit felt like a bad dream Celestine couldn't shake off. She sat at the kitchen table, staring out the window at the quiet streets, the warm morning sun mocking the cold emptiness inside her. Ronald's words echoed in her mind: "I didn't want you to know, Celestine. I didn't want you to get caught up in this." How had everything fallen apart so quickly?

Her father hadn't spoken to her since their argument, and she could tell he was still grappling with the reality of what he had become. The man she had trusted all her life was a stranger now, his secrets too dark to ignore. And Ronald-her first love-was tangled in a web of lies that she didn't know how to untangle.

She tried to focus, but her thoughts kept drifting back to her mother's journal, the one that spoke of a hidden world of shadows her mother had been trying to protect her from. It was too much to handle. Her mother had sacrificed everything, including her life, for something Celestine couldn't fully grasp. It hurt. It hurt to think that the only parent who had truly understood what was at stake had paid the price with her life.

Her phone buzzed. It was Ronald

Can we talk?

The text was simple, but it carried weight. Her heart lurched. She didn't know if she could face him, not after everything. But there was a part of her, the part that had loved him unconditionally, that knew she had no choice. She needed answers. She needed to know if the person she loved still existed beneath the lies.