Page 4 of Sage Haven

Eventually, I said yes to a date.

We grew close, especially as my father’s health worsened. He stepped in and paid bills I couldn’t cover. He offered me a kind of stability I hadn’t known since before my mother disappeared. At first, I thought he was saving me, but in time, I began to feel the invisible chains he had wrapped around me that were soft at first, like silk, out of sight to anyone who wasn’t looking.

And I wasn’t looking.

Not then. Not at first.

Because I didn’t understand that every favor he did for me, every dollar he spent, was a debt I was expected to repay. Quietly without question, like a silent form of bondage. But he still helped, even when he began to act differently towards me and maybe that’s why I let him treat me the way that he did.

But then my father died, and everything changed.

I saw Klay for who he was—a master manipulator who had been pulling my strings like a puppeteer, twisting my reality until I could no longer see an escape.

The night of my father’s funeral was when I realized who Klay really was, when I came to him, and he dismissed me like I was nothing but trash to be discarded.

But even he wasn’t worst of my fears.

That night…

Something worse happened.

Something I still can’t find the words to explain.

Something that hollowed me out completely and left me broken, as the ghost of the girl I had once been.

And it was that night I decided to run.

I packed what little I owned.

I climbed behind the wheel of my father’s old car.

And I drove.

No plan. No destination.

Only the desperate need to get away from this city, Sanele, and everything it had stripped from me.

The pain.

The memories.

The life that felt more like a sentence than a gift.

The parts of myself that wanted to give up, echoed in my mind that it was all pointless. But there was a flicker of something small and stubborn deep inside me; the last piece of the girl I used to be, and she whispered:

Keep going.

So I did.

I drove north, into a world I didn’t recognize.

And five hours later, just as dawn cracked the sky open, I found myself at an empty port.

A weathered wooden sign leaned crooked in the dirt, its peeling letters spelling out:

“Town of Providence, 2 Miles East.”

The name stuck in my chest like a hook pulling me in.