Chapter 4: The Key That Was Never Left In Sight
I carried Lily back to the living room and settled her on the couch with Tommy against her side, wrapped in the fabric shirt I had found nearby. She looked too small beneath the blanket. Tommy barely moved except for the shallow rise of his chest. I kept one hand on his back until I felt that motion continue, then forced myself to stand.
The locked door waited at the end of the hallway.
Before I went to it, I searched the places where a key would have been kept in any ordinary house. I opened the shallow drawer beneath the counter and found batteries, loose rubber bands, and a flashlight with a dead bulb. The ceramic bowl beside it held coins and a pair of earrings, but no key. I checked the hook near the entrance, the one where we usually left spare keys. Only the car key ring remained, its metal teeth cold in my fingers.
I moved through the kitchen drawers one at a time. The room smelled stale, as though the air had been shut inside with the cabinets. I found a screwdriver, a roll of tape, and a pair of scissors. None of them belonged to the lock. In the utility closet, behind folded towels and cleaning bottles, I found a small metal key ring with one empty loop and a broken brass key attached. The key had snapped near its narrow stem. Its jagged end showed a bright line of fresh metal.
I turned it over in my palm.
It might have belonged to a cabinet. It might have belonged to the locked door. It told me only that something had been broken and removed, not who had done it or when.
From the living room came a faint shift of fabric. I returned to the couch. Lily had not opened her eyes, but her fingers had tightened around Tommy's sleeve. I checked her forehead, then his. Neither felt hot. That frightened me more than a fever would have. They were simply cold and drained, as if the house had taken something from them while they waited.
I looked toward the hallway again. The door was close enough to touch, yet leaving them even for a minute felt like making the same choice their mother had made. The damaged key in my hand gave me another choice, worse in a different way. I could force the lock, splinter the frame, and perhaps destroy whatever evidence waited inside. Or I could leave the room closed and search for help while the children remained where I could see them.
The practical answer was to call someone. My phone showed several missed work messages and a low battery warning. I plugged it into the wall beside the couch and watched the charge begin. Work could wait. The house, the children, and the locked room could not.
I took the dead flashlight from the kitchen and returned to the hallway. I did not put my ear against the door. I did not turn the knob hard enough to make it click. Instead, I examined the frame from top to bottom. A narrow strip of dust had gathered along the threshold, except for one clean interruption near the hinge side. Something had passed over it recently, leaving a faint curved mark in the dust.
I crouched and held the broken key beside the lock without inserting it. The shape did not match closely enough to trust. Behind me, Lily and Tommy remained silent.
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I set the key on the floor, placed the flashlight beside it, and went back for the screwdriver. I would not break the door. I would first loosen the hinge-side plate, slowly, with the children within sight, and learn whether the room could be opened without tearing the house apart.
When I returned, I knelt before the wooden door and pressed the screwdriver into the first screw.
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