Chapter 77

OLIVIA’S POV The night had fallen quiet, blanketing the house in stillness. I was sitting on my bed, still lost in thought. The soft hum of the heater, the scent of lavender from the candle burning on my nightstand—it should have calmed me. But my mind was spinning, whirring with the weight of everything. Even with my daughter beside me, my thoughts kept bothering me. What if I lost my only family, too? That thought had been clinging to me like a shadow all evening. The kind of thought that creeps in when everything else has finally gone quiet—when the clinking of dinner plates stops, when the conversations fade, when the children are busy in their own world, and I’m finally left alone with the noise in my head. The weight of it settled in my chest like a stone. I sat at the edge of my bed, phone in hand, staring blankly at the screen. Not really scrolling. Just… existing. My thumb hovered over the keypad, but I didn’t know who I wanted to talk to. James had done enough. Derek had trie