Mrs. Anderson drew in a deep breath, like the air itself had grown heavy with ghosts. Her eyes didn't just glaze over—they plunged into the dark folds of time. And when she spoke, her voice wasn't of the present anymore. It belonged to a younger woman, one who still remembered the storm that never left her bones.
"Alice… twenty years ago, your father came to my door, bloodied, half-alive, carrying you in a cot. You were so small... untouched by the horror he had walked through. He was my... cl-closest friend—he lived a little further away from my home, on the edge of the woods."
A crooked smile lifted Mrs. Anderson's lips as she recalled the past.
