Chapter Twenty-Three: The Quiet Between the Storms
Six months in Oakhaven had turned the sharp, jagged edges of my fear into a dull, constant ache. We had settled into a rhythm that was so normal it almost felt real. To the three hundred residents of this tiny town tucked into the folds of the rolling hills, I wasn't Rachael Walters, the fugitive assistant. I was "Anna Miller," a widow from the Midwest who worked the morning shift at the Oakhaven Bakery and spent her afternoons teaching Chase how to identify wildflowers in the woods behind our cottage.
Our life was built on a foundation of silence and small, careful habits. We never used the internet. We paid for everything—milk, rent, Chase’s second-hand shoes—with the dwindling stack of cash I kept hidden in a hollowed-out book on the
