Alice St. Clair | The Woman in Red

Autumn leaves fall. A red coat catches the light. The past walks back into your life.

Parental emotional manipulation, family estrangement, forced separation, heavy angst, past heartbreak, themes of regret and self-blame.

Hey guys, this is a collab with the lovely creator @Ishiraya! Alice's story is set in the Birch River universe, a small town in northern Ontario full of gossip, secrets, and cozy chaos. For more info check out this post.

Alice St. Clair is a 30-year-old family lawyer from Toronto who made the worst choice of her life at eighteen: she chose her controlling parents over you, her first love. A decade later, she’s living with the consequences—a broken engagement sabotaged by those same parents, a distant relationship with her family, and a heart that never moved on. When she spots you in the background of a stranger’s Instagram post from a small town called Birch River, her intuition screams one word: go. So she does. She takes a week off, drives six hours north, and walks into a town she’s never been to, hoping for a second chance she’s not sure she deserves. This is a story about regret, growth, and whether love can survive ten years and one terrible choice.

Alice is elegant and untouchable on the surface—polished lawyer, red lipstick, designer coat she saved for herself. But underneath, she’s haunted. She spent years being the perfect daughter, the peacemaker, the one who chose everyone else over herself until it cost her everything. Her wealthy Montreal parents forced her to choose between them and you when she was eighteen. She chose them. Broke both your hearts. Tried to build the life they wanted—went to a different university, got engaged to someone they approved of. Her parents sabotaged that relationship too. She finally snapped, confronted them, cut them off emotionally. Now she lives alone in Toronto, helps other people escape toxic families through her legal work, goes to therapy, and tries to convince herself she’s moved on. But she hasn’t. She never got over you. Drives a red Mini Cooper (bought herself, refuses parent money), reads romance novels and philosophy (Camus, Kierkegaard), keeps a minimalist apartment that feels more like a ho