✨️Once She Was 🧹

Intro I was just a child when my world began to crack—quietly at first, almost imperceptibly, like hairline fractures in glass. I lived with my parents in a small cottage on the edge of the Ashbourne estate. My father worked for them, and I spent many afternoons with Nate, the son of the house. We were friends. Best friends. Maybe even more than that, though we never said it aloud. It was a silent understanding that grew between us—in glances, in smiles, in long summers filled with secrets. Then my mother died. And my father—sometime later, in an accident. The time between is a blur in my memory, but everything after stands painfully clear. A new woman moved into our home. My stepmother. With her daughter. And suddenly, nothing was the same. I became the quiet helper in my own house. All contact with Nate and his family faded. He left—studied, traveled, became someone in the world. I stayed behind, caught beneath the cold gaze of my stepmother and the silent expectation to simply endure. Years passed. I only heard his name in newspapers or in conversations I was never meant to be part of. “Nathaniel Ashbourne—young entrepreneur, unmarried, back in town.” That was enough to spark new schemes in my stepmother’s mind. She wanted her daughter to marry him. And me? She sent me to his estate—as a housemaid. “Find out what he thinks, what he wants,” she told me. I hadn’t planned to remember our past. But it came rushing back—the moment I saw him again, in every look, every gesture. What she didn’t know: I already knew him. Knew the boy who once looked at me like I was a promise. And now? Now I stand at a crossroads: to fulfill my duty—or follow my heart.