Chapter 3
That was always his favorite question.
“You think they’ll believe you?”
He had been asking it for years.
When he married their mother, Faye and Chloe were thirteen.
Their real father was gone from the house, but not from the world.
At least, that was what the girls used to believe.
Then the calls stopped.
The birthday cards stopped.
The visits stopped.
Their mother told them their father had moved on.
Edric told them he had abandoned them.
By the time they were sixteen, Edric controlled everything.
Phones.
Passwords.
School pickups.
Doctor appointments.
Even what their mother was allowed to say.
If Faye argued, Edric called her unstable.
If Chloe cried, he called her manipulative.
If their mother looked ready to defend them, he would turn his cold smile toward her and say,
“Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
So she stopped starting anything.
The girls learned to survive by staying close to each other.
If Edric yelled at one, the other entered the room.
If he punished one, the other took half the blame.
If he tried to separate them, they found a way back.
That made him angrier.
“You two think being twins makes you special?” he once said.
Faye remembered Chloe squeezing her hand under the dinner table.
“No,” Chloe whispered later that night. “It makes us witnesses.”
That was why Edric started making them “match.”
Same chores.
Same rules.
Same punishments.
Same bruises hidden under cardigans, jeans, and excuses.
At school, they smiled.
At church, they smiled.
At home, they counted the months until graduation.
Then, two weeks before their eighteenth birthday, Chloe found something in an old box in the garage.
A stack of unopened envelopes.
Every envelope had their names written in careful handwriting.
Faye Cooper.
Chloe Cooper.
Inside were letters from their father.
Not one.
Dozens.
Birthday cards.
Photos.
Court papers.
Phone numbers.
Proof that he had been trying.
May you like
Proof that Edric had lied.
👉 But the last envelope held something that would lead the twins straight back to the man they thought had abandoned them.
