Chapter 24: Letters and Birdsongs
Merlina’s POV
At this point, Vacancy Motel should probably start calling me their resident.
It had been a full day since I last saw Phoebe or Megan. And the truth? I no longer felt the need to be somewhere I wasn’t wanted.
Phoebe’s words had been clear, and she meant every one of them. ’Our lives would be easier without you.’ She wasn’t mincing words. It was as though she’d taken a knife to the fragile thread that had connected us and sliced it clean through. I wanted to scream, to ask how she could say that, but instead, I just let it hang in the air, heavy and suffocating.
Her words replayed in my head like a loop I couldn’t turn off. Was she right? Was I really that much of a burden?
Heck, my life would’ve been easier without all of this.
Who even plans to be the daughter of a professor who mysteriously dies on a college campus? It wasn’t in the brochure when I planned out my college life. Yet here I was, tangled in a mess of theories and suspicions that were slowly consuming me.
Maybe in Phoebe’s dictionary, it made sense. She didn’t understand, not really. And as much as I felt the sting of her insensitivity, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some shred of truth in what she’d said. What was I even chasing? What proof did I have?
Conor Lesnar.
Was he truly the one behind it all? Was he the reason my mother was dead? Or was I just creating a story because I needed someone to blame?
I stared at the chipped paint on the motel room’s walls, the silence pressing in on me. I needed evidence, something concrete, anything that could point me in the right direction. But what if there was nothing to find?