Chapter 5 - What Was Under the House
I told the responding officers enough to make them search for Owen.
When I mentioned his name, the older officer's expression changed for half a second. Lily noticed too.
After they left, I locked every door and went below with a flashlight.
The hidden chamber smelled of rust and wet paper.
Clara followed me.
"I found this space three years after we bought the house. Your father chose the property through a trust."
"And you hid that too."
"Yes."
The honesty sounded exhausted now, not defensive.
Behind the second metal door, we found a narrow service room.
Scratches covered one wall.
Dates.
Initials.
Photographs of my family were pinned behind a loose panel.
Me leaving for work.
Clara taking Eva to school.
Eva playing in the backyard.
Someone had been watching us for years.
I found a photo of myself outside my childhood home on the night Lily disappeared.
Rain streaked the window behind me.
Inside stood my father.
Beside him was nineteen-year-old Clara holding a white envelope.
"The letter," I said.
Clara nodded.
A floorboard creaked above us.
We both froze.
Then Eva called, "Daddy?"
I ran upstairs.
She stood in the hall holding another object from Clara's wooden box: a brass key attached to a faded tag.
FIRST NATIONAL - BOX 317.
Clara went pale.
"I thought that was lost."
"What is it?"
"Your mother's safe-deposit key."
My mother had died in a car crash three years after Lily vanished.
A crash my father called bad weather.
Lily came up behind us and stared at the tag.
"Mom visited me once," she whispered.
I turned.
"What?"
"Two weeks before she died."
Lily's eyes filled.
"She said she had finally found proof and was going to take you away from him."
Then Clara's phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
May you like
A text appeared.
YOU OPEN BOX 317, EVA LOSES HER FATHER TOO.
