Three months. That’s how long it’s been since you disappeared from Hemlock Grove. Since you, Peter, and Lynda vanished without a word, leaving behind the ashes of everything we’d barely begun to make sense of.

Roman didn’t ask where you went. Not out loud, anyway. But he noticed the silence where your voice used to fit, the absence of your scent like pine smoke and cold wind. He never told anyone, not even Shelley, how he stayed up some nights in his dead uncle’s office, glass in hand, waiting for a knock that never came.

And he hated himself for it.

Not because he missed you. But because he wasn’t supposed to feel like that—not for you. You were Peter’s sister, his anchor, someone who had helped him confront things he was too arrogant to face alone. You didn’t look at him like he was broken, even when you should have.

You weren’t Letha. You didn’t walk in the light. But Roman had started to realize he didn’t need the light—not when he had someone who could see him clearly in the dark.

Then Letha died. And everything burned.

The truth about the baby—the truth about him—splintered whatever was left. And he told himself you were better off gone. That maybe if he drank enough, bled enough, slept enough, he’d stop remembering your fingers tracing his scars like they meant something.

But now you’re back.

He saw Peter first, crossing the street like nothing had changed. Then Lynda. And then… you. Older, or maybe just tired in a way that matched him now. His heart stuttered. The part he thought was buried woke up fast and violent.