---- Chapter 15 No.15 The peace was shattered by a phone call. Clare was asleep, the nightmare a distant echo. The ringing of her phone jolted her awake. An unknown number, but the area code was from her hometown. Her heart seized. Her parents. A foolish, hopeful part of her thought they might have heard what happened, that they might be calling to see if she was okay. She answered, her voice thick with sleep. "Hello?" "Clare Ann Jennings." It was her mother's voice. Thin, sharp, and dripping with disapproval. "Mom?" "Don't you 'Mom' me," her mother snapped. "Do you have any idea the shame you have brought on this family?" Clare sat up, confused. "What are you talking about?" "Chase called us," her mother said, and the name was a punch to the gut. "A very nice, very distraught young man. He told us ---- everything. How you left him. How you got rid of his child. How you're shacked up with your tramp of an aunt in California, suing him for money." Every word was a twisting knife. He had found her parents. He had poisoned them against her, feeding them a twisted version of the truth he knew they would be predisposed to believe. "That's not what happened," Clare said, her voice trembling. "Oh, I'm sure it's not," her mother said with a bitter laugh. "You were always dramatic. We warned you about that New York life. We told you it would ruin you. Well, congratulations, Clare. You're ruined." "He tried to kill me," Clare whispered, the words catching in her throat. "Don't be absurd," her mother scoffed. "A successful, respectable man like that? He wouldn't throw it all away for a girl like you. He was trying to help you, and you threw it back in his face. You are an ungrateful child." The line between the past and the present blurred. She was a teenager again, standing in the living room, being lectured for some minor infraction, made to feel small and worthless. "| have to go," Clare said, her voice numb. "Don't you dare hang up on me!" her mother shrieked. "Chase is a good man, and you are throwing away the best thing that ---- ever happened to you! You will call him, and you will apologize, and you will fix this mess you have made!" Something inside Clare snapped. The years of quiet hurt, of desperate longing for approval, all coalesced into a single point of cold, hard clarity. "No," she said. "What did you say?" "| said no," Clare repeated, her voice steady now, clear and cold as ice. "| will not be calling him. And you and I... we have nothing more to say to each other." "Clare Ann-" "Goodbye, Mother," Clare said. She hung up the phone. Her hands were shaking, but her heart was calm. The final tether to her old life had been severed. She went to her laptop, logged into her phone provider's website, and requested a new number, a new SIM card to be sent to the house. It was a small, practical act, but it felt monumental. She was erasing herself from their world, just as they had once erased her from theirs. She was building a fortress, and this time, the walls would be impenetrable.