Months earlier, in a sprawling mansion at the quiet northern edge of the city,
Hannah Hale had been a lonely girl living behind closed curtains.
She wasn’t forbidden from playing—
she was simply told she was “too delicate,”
“too fragile,”
“too sick to be outside.”
Her stepmother, Veronica, insisted Hannah needed rest.
Her father, Richard, traveled constantly for work.
And so Hannah spent her days in bed, listening to the world from behind a window she rarely touched.
One afternoon, an old ball bounced into the garden.
A skinny boy climbed a tree, dropped over the wall, and ran to retrieve it.
Hannah saw him from her window.
She didn’t scream.
