Chapter 5 - The Secret in the Nursery
Kevin didn't speak as he walked over to the table. The boys looked at him, their smiles shrinking just a fraction, testing the waters to see if their happiness was about to be outlawed again.
"What is this?" Kevin asked, gesturing to the towering, lopsided structure of plastic blocks and coloring books spread across the floor.
"It's a spaceship," Justin whispered proudly, clutching a plastic astronaut. "It goes to the moon where Mom is."
The air left Kevin’s lungs. He knelt slowly on the hardwood floor, ignoring the expensive crease of his trousers. For fourteen months, anyone who mentioned Lauren in front of the boys was immediately silenced or dismissed. Kevin had treated her memory like a radioactive hazard, believing that keeping her name out of the air would somehow spare his sons the pain of her absence.
Instead, he had only made her a phantom—a terrifying, unnameable monster lurking in the corners of their minds.
"The moon?" Kevin managed to choke out, his voice rough.
"Yeah," Jordan chimed in, leaning against his father’s knee with a naturalness that felt miraculous. "Annie said Mom didn't just disappear. She said people who are loved that much turn into stars so they can watch over their kids from the sky. And she said we can talk to her whenever we want, because stars don't have locked doors."
Kevin’s gaze snapped up to meet Annie’s across the room. She was standing by the sink, drying her hands on a linen towel, her expression calm, sorrowful, and fiercely protective.
Later that night, after the boys were finally tucked safely into their own beds—not their mother's room, but their own, with Annie sitting in the rocking chair until their breathing slowed into deep, rhythmic cadences—Kevin confronted her in the hallway.
"You're breaking the rules," Kevin said quietly, his voice trembling with a cocktail of anger and profound gratitude. "I pay you to clean, cook, and keep them out of trouble. I didn't hire a therapist."
"No, you hired someone who didn't care about your money, your stock options, or your title," Annie replied, stepping out of the nursery and closing the door softly. She looked directly into his eyes, her gaze unwavering. "You've spent fourteen months running from your own grief by throwing money at strangers, Mr. Morrison. You thought if you bought enough credentials, someone else could parent your children through hell. But children don't care about degrees. They care about presence."
"You don't know anything about my life," Kevin hissed, though the sting of truth robbed his words of their bite.
"I know that Lauren didn't die just because a truck crossed a median," Annie said softly, dropping a bombshell that made the blood freeze in Kevin’s veins.
Kevin grabbed her by the forearm, his fingers locking around her cotton sleeve. "What did you just say?"
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Annie didn't flinch. She looked down at his hand, then back up into his horrified eyes.
"The night Lauren died," Annie whispered, "she wasn't just coming home from a charity gala. She was carrying a manila folder she pulled from your office safe. And she was crying so hard she could barely see the road."
