Chapter 2

Delia's POV

A court officer stepped forward to lead us away from the plaintiff and defendant tables.

I stood up, my legs still a little unsteady. Elliot practically stumbled his way out of the courtroom, and when he passed Cordelia, he actually flinched away from her without meaning to.

The second the conference room door shut, Elliot shoved me against it, his eyes bloodshot.

His voice came out rough. "Delia, do you know something? Why did you suddenly not want her anymore?"

I didn't fight him off, just shot back, "What about you? You used to treat her like she was the center of your world. So why didn't you want her back there?"

We stared each other down, the air thick with something neither of us wanted to say first.

After a long moment, Elliot's shoulders dropped. He let go of me and sank onto the couch, pressing his hands over his face like he was in pain.

"I died once." His voice was hoarse in the empty room, heavy with despair. "Delia, you're probably going to think I'm out of my mind, but I really did die once."

A shiver ran through me. I forced my racing heart to slow down and walked over to him. "How did you die?"

Elliot's head snapped up, his eyes wet with a mix of hatred and fear. "I treated Cordelia like a little princess. Gave her everything I had. But when she was fifteen, I got sick out of nowhere and ended up in the hospital. It wasn't until I was dying that I found out she'd been poisoning me the whole time."

"You came back too, didn't you?" He gave a bitter laugh. "I saw it in your eyes back in that courtroom. Same look as mine."

At that point, there was no reason to hold back anymore, so I told him everything. How in my first life I'd given up everything to fight for her, and she'd turned around and reported me, and I'd died in prison for it.

He let out a long breath after I finished. "How could this happen? She's ten. We watched her grow up. How could she turn out this cruel?"

"Wait." Something clicked. "Back in the courtroom, did you hear her voice? In your head?"

"You heard it too?" He blinked, caught off guard. "So it's just the two of us. What did you hear?"

"I heard her say she wanted to be with me."

Elliot's face twisted. "I heard the opposite. That she wanted to be with me, but she was worried about you being alone."

My eyebrows pulled together.

Why could only we hear it? If this was really something supernatural, why would it single out just the two of us? And the content itself was clearly designed to make us feel sorry for her, to push us into fighting each other for custody.

"Something's off, Elliot." I made myself stay calm. "But she's still just a kid. There's no way she could pull something like this off flawlessly on her own. There's something buried in her subconscious we don't know about."

"So what do we do?" By now I was the only thing he had left to hold onto.

"We call Corinne. She's one of the best psychologists out there, and she's my closest friend. I want her to put Cordelia under deep hypnosis. I need to see what's really going on in that kid's head."

Half an hour later, with our lawyers smoothing things over, we got the hearing paused, citing the need for the child to get psychological support after being traumatized in court. We brought Cordelia straight to Corinne's private practice.

Incense hung in the air inside the office, and a pendulum clock ticked steadily somewhere in the room.

Corinne, in her white coat, gently calmed Cordelia down and got her settled into the hypnosis chair.

"Delia, you two were way too reckless back there today. How could you say you didn't want her, right in front of the kid?" Corinne adjusted the hypnosis lamp, a little scolding in her tone.

"Corinne, I need you to do this for me. Something's been off with her lately, I can feel it. I need you to dig into her subconscious." I didn't explain further, just kept my eyes locked on Cordelia in the chair.

Under Corinne's guidance, Cordelia's breathing slowed and evened out until she slipped into a deep hypnotic state.

Elliot and I stood behind the one-way mirror, watching every second of it, tense.

"Cordelia, you're in a garden right now. Somewhere very safe." Corinne's voice was gentle. "Who do you see?"

"I see Mom..." Cordelia's eyes stayed shut, the corner of her mouth curving into a small, sweet smile.

Elliot glanced over at me, his expression unreadable.

"What does Mom look like? Can you describe her for me?" Corinne kept guiding her along.

Cordelia's voice went distant, almost dreamy. "Mom's wearing a red dress. A long, long red dress... her hair's all curly, like waves... and she smells so good, like really strong roses..."