She exhales, her shoulders sinking slightly like she’s carrying the weight of years of silence too heavy to hold onto any longer. “Your father came to see me that night. Cassie had been filling his head with lies, saying I was responsible for George’s death—that I killed him because he got another woman pregnant.”

Her voice wavers. And for the first time, I see it. The years of grief, the weight of something she’s never spoken aloud.

“I made him some tea, tried to calm him down,” she continues. Her voice is measured, careful, like she’s making sure she tells it just right. So she doesn’t misspeak or get a detail wrong. “I tried to talk sense into him, but he wouldn’t listen. He was so angry, Teddy. So convinced I was the villain in all of this. I… I lost my temper. I didn’t know George had a child with someone else. I told him to take all of you and leave.”

Her hands tighten around her mug. The first real crack in her composure. “It was freezing that night. The roads were slick. I didn’t think—I just wanted him to go, and then… then they didn’t come back.”

A shuddering breath. A single tear slips down her cheek.

The raw pain in her voice cuts through me, sharp and unrelenting. I’ve never heard her sound like this, so vulnerable, so human.

“Aunt Aubrey,” I say softly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She shakes her head, a tear slipping down her cheek. “I don’t know if that’s true. But I’ve lived with it every day since.”

Silence stretches between us, thick and heavy. Not uncomfortable, just… full.

When she finally looks up, her eyes are steadier, but still glassy. “I just want you to be careful, Teddy. With Bennett. With Selene. With all of this.” A pause, just long enough for her words to sink in. “There are things about this family—about this town—that you don’t know yet. And I want to protect you from them.”

I nod, my throat tight. This should feel reassuring, but it doesn’t sit right.

She stands, smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles from her shirt. “Good. That’s all I ask.”

At the door, she glances back at me. “And Teddy?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let anyone make you doubt yourself.”

The words should be comforting. Instead, they feel like a warning.

She leaves, and I stay rooted in place, staring out the window, coffee cooling in my hands.

Aubrey has never lied to me. Has she?

For all her warnings about Bennett, all her insistence that she’s trying to protect me, a thought lingers, quiet but persistent.

What if she’s not just protecting me—but herself?