Valerica Steele Dad -

She stared at the vial. “You’ve been… trapped?”

The official report said accidental drowning. Valerica, age ten, had said nothing. But she’d watched the tide pull his footprints away, and something inside her had calcified into stone. She drove nine hours to the coast, past towns that blurred into salt-stained memory. The lighthouse stood exactly as she remembered: whitewashed, skeletal, its beacon long dark. The door wasn’t locked. Inside, the air tasted of rust and old rain. valerica steele dad

Elias Steele looked older—gray threading his auburn hair, new lines carved around his eyes—but it was him. Same crooked smile. Same calloused hands. He stood slowly, as if afraid she might shatter. She stared at the vial

Her throat tightened. “So why now?”

Valerica didn’t move. “You died.”