Chapter 2 - The Photograph After the Funeral
Daniel locked the basement door and grabbed Emma by the wrist.
“Upstairs. Now.”
She pulled free. “Who called you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why are we listening to him?”
Because the caller knew her name.
Daniel did not say that part aloud.
He photographed the hidden room before touching anything else. Every shelf. Every box. The safe. The picture of his mother.
Laura Mercer had supposedly died in a highway crash when Daniel was eleven.
He remembered the closed casket. His father’s hand crushing his shoulder during the funeral. Martin Hale telling him, “Your dad needs you to be strong now.”
But the photograph in Daniel’s hand showed Laura outside a brick building marked ASHCROFT HOUSE.
On the back, his father had written:
LAURA - OCTOBER 2002. SHE ASKED ABOUT DANIEL AGAIN.
Emma read over his shoulder.
“Again?”
Daniel’s mouth went dry.
A second photograph slipped from the stack.
Rachel stood beside Daniel’s father in the hidden room.
The date was three years ago.
Daniel stared at his estranged wife’s face.
Rachel had moved out fourteen months earlier, saying she could not keep living inside a marriage built on “things nobody would say out loud.”
He had thought she meant them.
He called her.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Daniel?”
“Were you in my father’s basement three years ago?”
Silence.
His anger sharpened. “Rachel.”
“Where is Emma?”
Daniel looked at his daughter.
“Standing next to me.”
“Take her and leave the house.”
He almost laughed. “You know about the room.”
“I know enough to tell you not to stay there.”
“What is Ashcroft House?”
Rachel stopped breathing for a second.
Then the lights went out.
Emma whispered, “Dad?”
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
May you like
Daniel lowered the phone.
Someone else was inside the house.
