Chapter 4 Hello, Josephine

Nora's POV

I rip the photo in half before I even think about it.

Then I sit there on my couch at midnight holding two torn pieces of my own face, feeling stupid, because tearing it up doesn't undo the fact that someone stood close enough to take it. Ripping paper doesn't erase a person standing in the shadows with a camera, watching me hide behind a magazine rack like a coward.

I don't sleep. Not really. I lie in bed with the lamp on, and my phone gripped in my hand, jumping at every creak the old building makes, every car door slamming outside, every gust of wind against the window. Around four in the morning, I finally give up pretending and just sit up against the headboard, staring at the door as it might open on its own.

By the time my alarm goes off, I've already been awake so long the sound barely registers. My eyes feel like sandpaper. My hands still have that faint burn of dried adrenaline running under the skin, like static that never quite settled.

I almost don't go in to work.

I think about it seriously, standing in my kitchen holding a cup of coffee I don't even want, running through every version of calling in sick and disappearing somewhere new before anyone can ask me another question I can't answer. That's the old plan. That's always been the plan: the second anything gets too close, you run, you don't look back, you build a new name in a new city, and you never, ever explain yourself to anyone.

But running takes money I don't have yet, and papers I haven't finished forging, and three days at minimum I don't think I have anymore.

So I go to work instead, because staying and pretending everything is fine is somehow less terrifying than admitting out loud that it isn't.

Meredith is back at her desk when I step off the elevator, which almost makes me feel normal again for about four seconds. Almost.

"He wants to see you," she says, not even looking up from her screen. "Closed door. No one else in the room."

"Is there a meeting on the calendar?"

"There is now." She finally looks up, and something about her face makes my stomach drop another inch. "He blocked the whole morning, Nora. Whatever this is, it's not small."

I want to ask her what she means by that, but my throat has closed up too tight to get the words out. I just nod, and I walk toward that same door I walked through yesterday with coffee still shaking in my hands, except today there's no coffee waiting for me. Today there's just the door, and the silence behind it, and every instinct in my body screaming at me to turn around and run down the stairwell instead of stepping inside.

I don't run. I never run when people are watching. That's rule number one.

I open the door.

Emory is already sitting behind his desk, not standing by the window like yesterday, not pretending this is casual. There's a folder sitting closed in front of him, thick, the edges lined up perfectly straight, like he's been sitting there arranging it for the last twenty minutes, waiting for me to walk in.

"Sit down," he says.

I don't sit. My legs feel locked, planted just inside the doorway, my hand still resting on the handle like some part of me hasn't given up on the idea of bolting.

"What is this?"

"Sit down, Nora." Softer this time. Not a command. Almost, almost, something close to gentle. "Please."

Something about the word please coming out of his mouth scares me more than any order could have. I make myself walk to the chair and sit, spine straight, hands folded tight in my lap the way I did yesterday, bracing for whatever's about to come out of that folder.

He doesn't say anything for a long moment. He just watches me, the same careful, patient look from yesterday, like he's deciding exactly how much weight I can take before I break.

Then he slides the folder across the desk.

My hand doesn't want to move. Every cell in my body is telling me not to touch it, not to open it, to stand up right now and walk out before whatever's inside becomes real. But I reach out anyway, because not knowing is somehow worse than knowing, even when knowing might destroy everything I've built.

I flip it open.

The first page is a birth certificate. Not the one in my wallet, not the one with the name Nora Bellamy printed neat across the top in some clerk's careful handwriting. This one is old, the paper yellowed at the edges, stamped by a hospital in a state I haven't set foot in for three years.

Josephine Marie Whitlock.

My hands go cold. I flip to the next page before I can stop myself, and it's worse: an autopsy report, clinical and cold, official letterhead across the top, a name I haven't let myself say out loud in three years sitting right there in black ink.

Diane Whitlock.

My mother.

I can't breathe. The room tilts sideways for a second, my ears filling with a low ringing sound, and I have to grip the edge of the desk just to stay upright in the chair. Every single thing I've built over three years, the fake name, the fake job history, the fake laugh I practiced in a mirror until it looked real, all of it sits exposed on two pieces of paper in front of a man I barely know.

I look up at him, and I can't find a single word to say. Not one. My whole body has gone hollow, waiting for whatever comes next, because there's nothing left to hide behind now. No excuse. No story. Nothing.

He doesn't smile. He doesn't gloat. He just watches me with that same terrible patience, like he's been waiting three years for this exact moment to finally arrive.

"Hello, Josephine."