Chapter 3: Someone Had Been Inside
Ethan and I left through the side door, away from the guests still murmuring in the church. The cold air struck my face. Somewhere behind us, the organist had stopped playing, leaving only the hush of a wedding with no vows.
The church drive curved toward the street. A black sedan stood across the narrow exit.
Victor’s aide leaned against its hood.
“Mr. Whitmore asked that you wait,” he said.
“I’ve done enough waiting,” I replied.
I started toward my car. The aide stepped into my path and reached for the keys in my hand.
Ethan caught his wrist.
“Don’t.”
The aide glanced at Ethan’s grip, then at the church door, as if calculating how many people might be watching.
“I’m only trying to keep this from getting worse.”
“You can start by taking your hand off her keys,” Ethan said.
The aide did. I slid the keys into my coat pocket. My purse was still tucked securely beneath my arm. I wasn’t about to let anyone carry away one more thing that belonged to me.
Lauren came through the side door, her wedding dress gathered in one hand. She looked at Ethan, then the aide, then me.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
“You don’t have to,” I told her.
“I know.”
She didn’t ask where we were going. She simply climbed into my passenger seat, veil trailing over the door sill. Ethan took the back. When I started the engine, the aide moved aside, but the sedan remained across the drive until Ethan leaned forward and said something I couldn’t hear.
Then it rolled away.
I kept both hands on the wheel. Lauren watched the church recede in the rearview mirror.
“Was Victor telling the truth?” she asked. “About someone going to your house?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why would he say it?”
“Because he wanted me afraid. Or because he wanted to warn me. I’m not sure which possibility is worse.”
Neither of them answered. The locket box pressed against my ribs beneath my coat. I had brought it to give my daughter a promise. Now it felt like something fragile I was trying to keep from being taken.
The house looked ordinary from the street. A narrow porch, the old maple beside the driveway, the kitchen curtains I’d sewn years ago. Nothing seemed disturbed from where I parked.
Then I saw the back door.
The lock hung crooked in its frame.
Lauren reached for me before I could get out.
“Wait.”
“I’m not going to stand here while someone may be inside.”
She got out first and moved in front of me, her skirts brushing the car. The reversal stopped me for half a heartbeat. Once, when she was small, she’d clutched my hand crossing this same driveway. Now she was shielding me with her own body.
“Mom,” she said quietly, “stay behind me.”
“I’ve raised you too well to let you go first.”
A strained little breath escaped her—not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. Ethan joined us, and we approached the door together. He called out once. The house gave no answer.
Inside, the kitchen smelled of cold coffee and something damp.
A drawer stood open beneath the counter. Another hung crooked. The little bowl where I kept spare buttons had been dumped onto the floor. My recipe cards, tied with a faded blue ribbon, lay scattered over the table.
Nothing valuable appeared to be missing. The television remained. My jewelry box sat untouched on the bedroom dresser. My wallet was still in my purse, and the small envelope of cash I kept in the pantry had not been disturbed.
Someone hadn’t come to steal.
They had come looking.
Lauren stepped around the fallen recipe cards. “What would they want?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at the disordered kitchen, trying to see it as a stranger might. The cabinets were open. The desk in the hall had been searched. A stack of old mail lay fanned across the floor.
Then I noticed the muddy print.
It crossed the kitchen tile toward the pantry. The heel was sharply defined, the toe smeared where whoever made it had pivoted. Beyond it, a second partial mark disappeared under the half-open pantry door.
Ethan shifted in front of Lauren. “Stay here.”
She didn’t move. “No.”
A faint sound came from behind the door.
Not a voice. Not a footstep. A small, careful scrape.
My mouth went dry. I thought of the kitchen knife block beside the sink, close enough to reach. I stepped toward it.
Ethan whispered my name, but I kept moving. The house seemed to hold its breath around us—the refrigerator humming, rain ticking softly against the window, Lauren’s veil whispering over the floor as she followed.
At the sink, I wrapped my fingers around the largest knife.
Lauren moved between me and the pantry.
“Get behind me,” she said.
For one bewildered second, I saw her as a girl again, standing in my kitchen after a nightmare, waiting for me to tell her the dark was empty. But she wasn’t a child, and I couldn’t promise her anything now.
I gripped the knife with both hands.
May you like
The pantry door shifted an inch.
Then its handle began to turn.
