There was a time when Elara couldn't go five minutes without checking a mirror.
It had been unconscious at first, habitual glances at her reflection in passing windows, a twitch of the eyes toward any reflective surface. Not vanity. Just... need. Reassurance. Confirmation that she was still herself, that no second self had slipped into her skin while she wasn't looking.
But after the cabin, after the shattering, that habit dissolved.
She didn't avoid mirrors out of fear.
She simply didn't need them anymore.
Now, her new apartment didn't have a single one.
It had been three months since she left the house she'd grown up in. Three months since she buried the pendant, said goodbye to Isla at the lakeside, and left a note for Margaret: "I forgive you, but I need space to heal."
The apartment was small: one bedroom, a kitchenette that barely fit a table, walls still bare except for two paintings, her own. One of the lakes at dawn. The other, abstract: a face submerged in water, half light, half shadow, mouth open in silence.
She slept well now.
Mostly.
Except for the occasional knock on the door that wasn't there.
One morning, Elara received a letter.
No return address.
Inside: a postcard of a lighthouse.
And one line written in blocky pen:
"Do you remember the boat?"
She dropped the card immediately.
Her heart pounded. Her palms went cold.
The boat.
She hadn't thought of it in years.
The small rowboat they'd kept at the edge of the lake, beneath a tarp. Their father used to take them out there at night, saying the stars were best viewed from the center.
Sometimes Isla refused to go. Elara never knew why.
Now she wondered if Isla remembered something she hadn't.
Or… if Isla had never forgotten.
That evening, Elara walked three blocks to the gallery where she worked part-time restoring old paintings. The scent of turpentine and aged canvas met her like a ritual.
Marion, her boss, glanced up.
"You okay?" she asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Not a ghost," Elara replied. "Just a postcard."
Marion smirked, used to her strange answers. "Fan mail?"
"Something like that."
They worked in silence for a while.
Until Elara asked, softly, "You ever… remember something you thought you forgot?"
Marion didn't look up from the delicate canvas she was cleaning. "Memory's a strange beast," she said. "Sometimes it protects you. Sometimes it turns on you."
Elara nodded. "Mine's been both."
That night, she dreamed of the boat.
But not the way she remembered it.
In the dream, she was alone in the middle of the lake. Fog all around. The oars are gone. The water black as pitch.
She looked over the edge and saw herself in the reflection, only it wasn't her.
It was Mara.
Not furious. Not vengeful.
Just waiting.
She woke in a sweat.
And found a second postcard on her kitchen counter.
She hadn't locked the door last night.
This time, it was a photo of a broken mirror in the grass.
And one line:
"She's not done."
She called Dr. Carter that morning.
They hadn't spoken since the last session, since the night she'd walked into the cabin and chosen to unmake Mara.
But the therapist's voice was still calm, steady.
"I think someone's trying to bring her back," Elara said.
"Who?"
"I don't know. But the messages… they're not threatening. They feel more like… invitations."
"Could it be your mother?"
"She's still checked in. I called. She hasn't left the clinic."
"Then maybe it's your mind, Elara. Still unraveling things."
"I thought I put Mara to rest."
Carter paused.
"She was a construct, yes. But the trauma that made her that's not so easily exorcised."
Elara didn't speak to anyone the rest of the day.
She painted. It didn't help.
She tried to eat. Couldn't finish.
At sunset, she walked to the lake, not the one near her childhood home, but another nearby, smaller. Still water. Fewer trees. Less history.
She sat by the edge and thought of Isla.
How brave she'd been.
How alone she must have felt at the end.
A cold wind kissed the water.
Something rippled beneath the surface.
Elara leaned forward.
And for the briefest moment
She saw two reflections.
She ran home, shaking.
The apartment felt too small. Too dark.
She flipped every light on.
Checked every window.
Every drawer.
Then she saw it.
The mirror.
It hadn't been there before.
But now it stood in the corner of the living room.
Tall. Cracked.
Exactly like the one from the cabin.
"No," she whispered.
She stepped closer.
The reflection stared back.
Her face.
But wrong.
Eyes are too sharp. Smile too wide.
"You thought it was over," Mara said.
Elara's voice was trembling. "It was. I ended you."
"You unlocked me."
"No."
"You didn't kill him."
"I know."
"But you let him haunt Isla. You let me grow."
Tears stung Elara's eyes.
"I was a child."
Mara's smile softened.
"So was I."
The mirror fogged, then cleared.
And the reflection was gone.
Just Elara again.
But something inside her cracked like old paint.
The next morning, she received a phone call.
It was Marion.
"Someone came into the gallery after hours," she said. "Didn't break in, had a key. Left something."
"What?"
"Thought you should see it for yourself."
Elara arrived twenty minutes later.
The gallery was dim, early morning sun filtering through dusty windows.
On the front counter lay a wrapped canvas, face down.
A sticky note read: "For Elara."
She flipped it over.
It was a painting.
Of her.
As a child.
Standing in a rowboat.
With someone behind her, shadowed. Faceless.
And in the reflection of the water…
Mara.
Marion stood beside her, arms folded. "Any idea who did this?"
"No," Elara said softly. "But I think I know who it's for."
That night, she called the psychiatric facility.
Asked if her mother had any recent visitors.
Just one, they said.
A woman named Anna.
Elara's breath caught.
"Did she leave a last name?"
"No. But we have her on the visitor log. Came three times this month."
Anna.
The woman from the photo.
The woman no one ever explained.
The one her mother once denied even existed.
She went back to the old house the next day.
Margaret wasn't there, of course. The house was up for sale.
But she still had a spare key.
Inside, the silence greeted her like an old friend.
She went to the basement.
Where the shadows had first split her in two.
And there, on the far wall, she found something new.
A panel.
Loose.
Behind it was an old lockbox.
Inside the box
Letters.
Photos.
And a birth certificate.
Anna Collins
Born: August 12, 1975
Mother: Margaret Collins.
Her mother's daughter.
Another one.
Another sister.
The truth hit like thunder.
She wasn't Elara's aunt.
She was Elara's sister.
Half-sister.
Older.
The one who had been erased.
Forgotten.
Buried beneath all the lies.
Back at the apartment, Elara stared at the painting again.
The boat.
The faceless figure.
Was it Anna behind her?
Was it Anna who had brought Mara back?
And if so, why?
The next postcard arrived that night.
No envelope.
No words.
Just a drawing.
Two girls.
One with a face.
The other is just a shadow.
And beneath it, a location:
"38 Bellwood Lane. Midnight."