“He told me my entire life would be ruined before it even started,” Dylan murmured, staring blankly down at his plate. “He said if I ever came near this house again, or if I ever tried to contact you, he’d make sure the police arrested me for grand larceny. He had the jewelry locked away, he had the cash staged, and he had a completely fabricated story already typed up and ready to hand to the local authorities. I didn’t have a lawyer, I didn’t have money for bail, and I certainly didn’t have anyone standing behind me to back up my word.”
“Except you did,” I said quietly, reaching across the table to lay my hand gently over his. “You had the absolute truth. It just took twenty agonizing years for the truth to finally catch up to the lies.”
Chapter 3: Unlocking the Past
Dylan finally looked up, his eyes shining brightly with unshed tears that mirrored my own. “When I left for college that very morning, I felt like my whole world was splitting directly in half. I was going off to study finance, of all things—trying to figure out how numbers and corporate spreadsheets worked—while my real, personal life felt like a chaotic math equation that completely refused to add up. I kept thinking, Mrs. Holland knows me. She’s known me since I was eight years old. She knows I wouldn’t steal her mother’s ring. But then the weeks turned into months, the months into years, and every letter I sent through the mail was returned unopened or ignored.”
