Chapter 4

The Miller women.

My grandmother used to tell me stories. She didn't call it a curse or a power. She called it "The Knowing."

"We feel things deeper, Sarah," she'd say, her hands covered in clay from her potter's wheel. "We see the patterns. When we love, our love builds things. When we are betrayed, the world feels it. It's a balance. A heavy one."

My family line wasn't one of wealth or power like the Stones. It was a line of artists, poets, and architects. Women who created things from their soul. We built homes that felt like sanctuaries and gardens that healed the grieving. My grandmother believed our creative energy was tied directly to the fabric of the world around us. A gift, and a burden.

I had dismissed it as folklore, a way to make our quiet lives feel more significant. When I fell in love with David, I fell in love with his drive, his energy that was so different from the quiet introspection of my family. I chose his world. I poured my love, my energy, my "Knowing," into him and his ambitions. I helped him build his empire, believing I was building a future for my family.

I remembered standing with him on the plot of land where we would build our first home. I had designed it myself, before I gave up my career.

"It will be our fortress, Sarah," he had promised, holding me close. "A place where the world can't touch us. Just you, me, and our children."

A promise he had long since forgotten. A promise he had burned to the ground along with my son's spirit.

Now, sitting on the cold floor of that same house, I felt the full weight of my grandmother's words. The balance had been broken. The betrayal was absolute. And the world would indeed feel it.

My phone buzzed again. It was Arthur.

"Sarah, please. David is... he is destroyed. He is not the man you know. He's asking for you."

"The man I know killed my son," I said, my voice flat. "There is nothing left to say."

"The funeral," Arthur pleaded, his voice desperate. "We must arrange the funeral. Please, don't leave before the funeral. For Ethan. We must honor him."

He was trying to anchor me, to use my love for my son to keep me tethered to their collapsing world. He was afraid. Not just of David's grief, but of me. Of what I was. Of what I might do.

"There will be no Stone funeral," I stated, the decision forming in my mind with crystalline clarity. "Ethan was a Miller. He will be honored according to the traditions of my family, not yours."

My grandmother's tradition was specific. It was not about burial in the cold, hard ground. It was about release. About returning the spirit to the elements it came from.

"I am coming to get his things," I said. "And then I am taking him home. To the coast. Where my grandmother is buried. Where he will be free."

I stood up, my body aching but my purpose clear. I walked through the house, my house, and began to pack. Not for me. For Ethan. His favorite worn sketchbook. The small clay bird he made for me when he was six. His worn blanket that still smelled like him. Each object was a lifetime. Each object was a reason.

I was not leaving. I was escaping. I was not just taking his things. I was taking his memory, his spirit, his light, and I was getting it as far away from the poison of the Stone family as I possibly could. The curse Arthur spoke of wasn't something I had to cast. It was something David had already unleashed upon himself. I was just walking away from the fallout.