Chapter 4
The shadow was gone by the time I reached the garden.
Wet leaves clung to my shoes. I followed the narrow path between the rows, past the sagging bean poles and the patch where Grandpa grew tomatoes, scanning the fence for movement. The air smelled of rain and dark soil. Brianna hurried behind me, her breath catching whenever the ground sucked at her boots.
“Stop,” she said.
Fresh boot prints pressed into the mud beside the tool shed. One pointed toward the back door. Another faced the alley beyond the garden, where a gap in the lilacs opened onto the lane.
I crouched, careful not to step on them. The tread was deep and sharply defined. Whoever had made the prints had come close enough to the house to test the handle, then turned toward the shed.
“Could’ve been one of the movers,” Brianna said.
“The movers had a truck.”
She looked at the prints and said nothing.
The shed door hung slightly open. I glanced at Brianna, then pushed it wider with my shoulder. Grandpa’s old tools lined the walls, neat as soldiers. A rusted rake leaned beside a tin bucket. The familiar smell of oil and damp wood filled the cramped space.
Nothing moved.
I checked behind the workbench and beneath a tarp, my pulse still jumping at every soft shift of the wind. Near the back wall, a wooden panel sat crooked in its frame. One edge was split, pale splinters showing against the dark boards.
I touched the damage. The wood was fresh enough to snag my fingertip.
“Someone tried to get inside,” I said.
“Or they did.”
Brianna stepped back toward the door. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t want to stand in the shed either, but I wanted even less to leave without knowing what had been disturbed.
I called Ruth.
She arrived ten minutes later, coat buttoned against the drizzle, her hair pinned back with the same practical precision she’d worn at the house. She examined the shed panel without touching it, then looked from me to Brianna.
“Did either of you see the person?”
“No,” I said. “Just a shadow.”
Ruth didn’t tell me what to do. She asked what we’d already checked and waited for my answer.
“The shed. Not the study.”
“Then we start where Walter kept his papers,” she said. “You know the room better than I do.”
Inside, the study smelled of dust, old paper, and the lemon oil Grandpa used on the desk. His chair stood pushed in beneath it. I’d spent years watching him sit there, sorting bills and writing grocery lists in his slanted block letters. Now the room felt occupied by his absence.
Ruth stayed near the doorway while Brianna and I searched. I pulled open the desk drawers, one at a time. Receipts, envelopes, a blunt pencil, a packet of seeds. No hidden compartment, no sudden answer.
The brass key in my pocket pressed against my thigh. I kept the torn note there too.
Not in the desk.
The words had bothered me since I found them. I ran my hand beneath the desk drawer, feeling for a catch or a tucked scrap of paper. Nothing. Then I eased the bottom drawer all the way out and turned it over.
A folded note clung to the underside, held by a strip of yellowed tape.
My hands went still.
“Emily?” Ruth asked.
“I found something.”
I peeled the note free. The paper was thin and brittle, but the handwriting was unmistakably Grandpa’s.
Not the desk. The seed tin.
I read it again. There was no map, no explanation, only those four words. Still, they felt like a hand on my shoulder, steering me away from the drawers and toward a place I hadn’t thought to look.
“A seed tin?” Brianna asked.
“He kept seeds in the kitchen cabinet,” I said. “But this sounds like a different one.”
Ruth studied the note without reaching for it. “Could be. You’ll know his habits better than I do.”
I slipped it into my pocket beside the torn scrap. A clue was not the same thing as an answer. Grandpa had made that distinction often, usually while I was trying to guess where he’d hidden my birthday gift.
I reached into the empty space beneath the drawer and felt a stiff card tucked against the back of the desk. When I pulled it free, a photograph came with it.
The picture showed Dad standing beside a man outside a brick building. Dad’s coat was buttoned to his throat, his face turned toward the stranger. The stranger held a slim leather folder under one arm. The image was grainy, but the name printed on the card was clear:
CALDER VOSS
VOSS DEVELOPMENT
“Do you know him?” I asked Brianna.
Her face changed—not much, but enough. Her eyes fixed on the photograph, then flicked toward the hall.
“Brianna.”
“I’ve seen him before.”
“Where?”
“With Dad. At a restaurant.” Her voice dropped. “A few months ago.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I didn’t know it mattered.”
“You knew he was meeting Dad.”
“I knew they were talking. Dad said it was business.”
The word landed between us, bland and useless.
I looked back at the photograph. Dad’s shoulders were tight. Calder Voss appeared relaxed, as if the conversation had gone exactly the way he wanted.
“You let me think you knew nothing,” I said.
“I didn’t know about the house.” Brianna’s chin lifted, defensive now. “I swear.”
I wanted to believe her. That didn’t make the sting go away. She had helped Mom photograph Grandpa’s papers. She’d held back this meeting. Each time she offered me something true, I found the space where something else had been withheld.
Ruth examined Calder’s card. “I don’t know what the meeting was about. This shows they met. Nothing more.”
“Dad told us Grandpa wanted the house to stay in the family,” I said. “He didn’t say anything about a developer.”
A sound came from my pocket. My phone vibrated against the note.
The number was unfamiliar. I answered.
“Emily Carter?”
“Yes.”
“This is Calder Voss. Your father gave me your number.” His voice was smooth, almost warm. “I understand things have been unsettled.”
I looked at the photograph in my hand.
“What do you want?”
“I want to avoid making a difficult situation worse. I expect the property cleared by morning.”
Brianna went pale.
Behind me, Ruth’s expression sharpened, but she let me speak.
“This is my home,” I said.
May you like
A pause, just long enough to feel deliberate.
“Not for much longer,” Calder replied.
