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She checked the contributor activity log. IP address: her own. Timestamp: 3:17 AM, November 13.

She checked the upload date: The day after she stopped logging in.

The Shutterstock sign-in page had held a secret version of herself—the one who refused to stop making Lily visible, even when waking Elena couldn't bear to look. shutterstock sign in

Thumbnails flooded the screen like a photo album from a ghost. A toddler’s muddy boots on a autumn sidewalk. A half-eaten popsicle dripping pink onto a picnic table. A shadow of a little girl on a beach at sunset, arms stretched wide like she was trying to hug the ocean.

She had signed in that night. She had edited that photo with surgical precision. She had written the keywords: “letting go, wish, childhood, goodbye.” And then she had uploaded it, and signed out, and forgotten entirely. She checked the contributor activity log

Welcome back, Elena.

Elena wasn’t logging out this time.

The muddy boots were taken fifteen minutes before Lily tripped into the street. The popsicle was the last thing she asked for. The beach shadow—that was the morning of the diagnosis.