# Chapter 20: A Weak Sun, a Fragile Promise, and the Shadow That Wouldn’t Stay Gone
Hello everyone, it’s me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 20 of "Forget You Saw Her free digital audiobook." This is the chapter where hope flickers like winter sunlight through wind-spun clouds—and then a nightmare from Isabel’s past steps out of the dark to swallow it whole. So take a breath, stay close, and let’s walk through it together.
The chapter opens in Ogden, Utah, in 2012, the morning after Isabel swallowed the goodfellas. The sun is weak, faint, the kind of winter light that barely warms anything, but it still finds her under the underpass. It stretches toward the frozen ground where she slept in the shadows, and to Isabel, it feels like a small miracle. Maybe it is only the last lingering fog of the pills. Maybe it is something more. For a moment, she half believes that if she squints hard enough, she might see Jesus smiling the way He did in the picture books her mother read to her when she was little.
She sits up, her body stiff with cold, and looks around the underpass. To her left is the older woman, asleep beside the tiny fire she made, a rumpled sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders. Isabel’s mind whispers something tender and almost dangerous: *She’s not a piece of trash. So maybe I’m not either.* The thought catches in her throat. She reaches into her pocket and touches the bag of goodfellas. She cannot bring herself to throw them away yet, but she makes herself a promise: tonight, she will not reach for another pill.
Over the next few days, she keeps that promise. She trades some of her cash for a sleeping bag that smells like old cheese but is actually warm, along with a tiny camp stove, a lighter, and a water bottle. The old woman—whose name Isabel never learns, and who never learns Isabel’s either; they do not ask—lets her walk a few blocks to a food pantry that hands out free meals twice a day. It sits next to a discount bakery that sells barely expired mini-donuts and cheap loaves of bread. Isabel is terrified to leave the shelter of the underpass in daylight, but she tucks a sweatshirt around her neck like a thick scarf, pulls her hood up over her distinctive hair, and tells herself that no one who sees her will recognize her. The underpass walls make a decent shelter from the wind, and at night the sleeping bag keeps her warm enough, even if it stinks. She does not bother trying to trade for a tent. And it is a good thing she doesn’t, because just three days after she arrives, two police cars with flashing lights show up and begin tearing down the shelters.
Isabel is ready when it happens. She grabs her sleeping bag—which doubles as a carrier for most of her clothes—shoves the camp stove into her backpack, and hurries along the sidewalk. She follows a few paces behind Art Guy, a man pushing a shopping cart full of paintings, and Crow Lady, a woman who seems determined to befriend the big black birds that swoop by the underpass all day. The old woman and a few others who have tents and tarps draped over cardboard boxes and pallets stay where they are, with their things. Isabel can hear some of them yelling at the police as she rushes away, head tucked into her sweatshirt and coat. She wants to make sure the old woman is okay, but she is too scared to do anything except shuffle away from the underpass.
When the flashing red-and-blue lights finally move on, and Isabel dares to return, the people who stayed behind with their shelters are gone—along with their things. That makes her cry for the first time since running away from the eight-plex. But she tells herself the old woman will be okay. The way she smiled and waved at Isabel from her shelter the night she showed up, then kindly pointed her toward the food bank without being asked, makes Isabel think she is good at not just surviving but holding tight to the best parts of herself while she does it. Isabel decides she wants to learn how to do that, too. She falls asleep thinking about it, the warmth of that thought making her sigh in a way even the goodfellas never had.
While she sleeps, she dreams that she is home. Not the house she grew up in, not the pink bedspread with white hearts in the room she shared with Abish. Not the cold, creaky apartment where a knock on the door made her stomach clench every time. But her own home. A place with thick, soft carpet she loves, bright green plants crawling along the windowsills on long delicate legs, and windows letting in lots of glorious, warm sunlight. She is standing barefoot on that carpet, happy and satisfied, when something in the real world wakes her.
Her battered lip and cheek—still healing—are suddenly on fire again. It takes her a second to realize why: someone is pressing a hand over them, tight. A knee is jammed so hard against her chest that she cannot make a sound, let alone breathe. She cannot see clearly, not only because it is dark but because he is smashing her head into her sleeping bag with his hand. She does not need to see him, though. His voice and his breath—wheezing, hot, rancid—are seared into her memory. How had he found her?
Dennis Beaumont.
He rasps that he came by her place tonight. Imagine his surprise, he says, when he heard she had up and run away. He tells her he guesses he shouldn’t be surprised. They both know how she likes to tease him, he says. Then he warns her not to fuss. The more she fusses, the worse it will be.
Isabel twists her hips, desperately trying to kick her legs free from the sleeping bag so she can strike at him, but he leans even harder onto her chest. She cannot breathe. She cannot even pull in a sliver of air. The dark outline of the smashed-up sleeping bag in front of her face starts to go fuzzy at the edges. She wishes more than anything that she had reported him to the police, even if it got her in trouble or locked up. She wishes she had found a payphone and called her parents, even if they still did not believe her. Even if they hung up on her. Because as the pain in her chest turns so sharp she is sure she cannot bear another second without losing consciousness, she knows she has lost her chance. Not the chance to be believed. Just the chance that, when they find her body, somebody might look twice in Dennis Beaumont’s direction.
He presses his chapped lips to her ear, whispers a vile, possessive name, and tells her there will be no more running. That is the last thing she hears before her vision goes black.
Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating: This chapter hit me like a punch to the chest. It begins with such fragile, almost holy hope—the weak sun, the promise to stay away from the pills, the old woman’s quiet kindness, the dream of a warm home with plants and sunlight. Then it rips all of that away in a few terrifying moments. Isabel’s small victories feel so real, which makes Dennis finding her even more horrifying. The writing balances tenderness and dread so well that I felt every shift. It is not an easy chapter, but it is a powerful one. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.9 / 5 Stars
Next Chapter Prediction: That blackout cliffhanger leaves everything hanging. I predict the next chapter will reveal the aftermath of Dennis’s attack. Someone from the underpass—perhaps the old woman, Art Guy, or Crow Lady—might interrupt him, or the police might still be close enough to hear something. Isabel could wake up in a hospital, a shelter, or another hidden place, and if she survives, I think this attack will finally push her to report Dennis or reach out to her parents, even if she fears they won’t believe her. Dennis may try to flee or escalate, but Isabel’s fight for survival is far from over. The next chapter will likely decide whether she is found in time—and whether the life she dreamed of is still possible.
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