Page 83 of Lost Echoes

Billa shakes her head. “You already did. You cut the thread.”

The three of us sit there for a while, the fire popping softly, the air smelling like cinnamon and new beginnings. Outside, leaves rustle against the window.

When Graham brings in mugs of tea, Fenna curls up beside me and points at the photo.

I brush a strand of her hair from her face. “It’s over now.”

Billa nods, quiet but sure. “It’s over.”

We sip our tea and eat more rolls, and thankfully, there’s no tension pressing at the edges of the moment. There are no alarms, no codes, no secrets. Just warmth, and the soft hum of a house full of life and love.

Later, when everyone has retreated to their own rooms and the photo rests on my nightstand, I lie awake, staring at it.

The thread in the picture seems to glow faintly in the firelight, as though the story itself is still alive. Not in the lab, or the files, but in us.

And I realize the ending isn’t silence.

It’s freedom.

41

Kenzi

After everyone’s asleep, I sit alone by the fire in one of the sitting rooms, the framed photo propped on my knees. The flames reflect across the glass, turning the white thread into a river of light.

It’s strange how everything fits now. Not neatly like a solved puzzle, but in a way that makes sense.

My parents’ names showed up in the Radley files last week on signatures on research grants, side notes on “behavioral observation.” I had wondered how they could’ve been part of something so cruel. Now I see it’s not that simple. They were pretending they were funding innovation, not manipulation. Still, they sent their children there, although they knew what Dr. Radley really was. They avoided paying penalties.

Billa’s mother was involved too, despite her deep hatred of my mother. Her name on patient rosters, handwritten notes about “progressions” and “scripts.” For years, she was just another ghost we didn’t know about. But she was part of the same system that shaped us, and she tried, in her own broken way, to undo it. Now she’s paying the price.

And then there was Claire. My sister, who died before any of this came to light. We found her file among the archives Sofia rescued—she’d been brought to the facility too, years before me. She’d known. She’d tried to warn my parents, to stop the cycle before it reached me.

But it was useless because they already knew. They didn’t care.

Sadly, typical of the Brannon line.

The new generation in our family is changing everything.

All those fragments I could never piece together—the nightmares, the whispers, the memories that didn’t belong to me, and even my sleepwalking—they’re not fragments anymore. They’re truth. A complete story.

My past, and I own it. I’m healing, and soon I’ll find a way to bring good from what was meant to shatter.

I run my finger along the photo’s frame, tracing the words burned into the image.

We remember. We end it here.

Now the past doesn’t feel like something chasing me. It feels like a story that’s finally finished being written. This time, I get to be the author.

The house creaks softly as the fire burns lower. Fenna laughs in her sleep down the hall, a bright sound that floats into the little room.

I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of life moving forward.

Everything that was taken from us has found its way back, thread by thread.

Not perfect. Not complete.

But ours. And we will make it whole.

We have the power to change the future. The past is what it is, and we can’t fix that. But the people behind our pain have been exposed, and even more light will shine on their evil machinations when Sofia’s book comes out and Florencia releases her docuseries.

The world will know the truth. We control the narrative now.

As the house settles and the fire dims, somewhere in the dark, a thread hums softly. It no longer holds me. The thread that once pulled my strings now lies in my hands, and this time, I alone decide where I lead myself.