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“Sorry, Dad. I just meant… you know what I meant.”
Ethan touched my shoulder as Adam disappeared down the basement stairs.
“He’s not wrong, you know. This place has been holding its breath for twenty years.”
“So have I,” I whispered.
“This place has been holding its breath for 20 years.”
Diane was already in the living room, lifting framed photographs off the mantle, her fingers lingering on the one of Laura and the girls.
“You kept everything exactly the same,” she murmured. “Even her reading chair.”
“I couldn’t move it. Couldn’t move anything.”
“That’s not healthy, you know. Holding on like this.”
“You’ve been telling me that for two decades, Diane.”
“Because I love you. Because Laura would want you to live.”
“You kept everything exactly the same.”
I didn’t answer. I never did.
Instead, I climbed the stairs slowly, my hand trailing the banister, and stopped outside the pink door at the end of the hall. The girls’ room. Untouched. Frozen.
I pressed my forehead against the wood and closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to no one. “I’m sorry it took me this long.”
Then, as I turned the knob and stepped inside the small museum of a life I never got to finish, Adam’s scream tore through the house from the basement below.
“Dad! Come here right now!”
“I’m sorry it took me this long.”
I rushed down the basement stairs two at a time, my heart pounding against my ribs.
“Adam? What is it? What happened?”
He stood frozen near the back wall, where a wooden panel hung crooked. In his trembling hands was a dusty plastic case.
“Dad… I found this behind the panel. The one Mom always told you not to touch, remember?”
“Let me see it.”
He held it out like it might burn him.
“The one Mom always told you not to touch, remember?”
“There’s a date written on it. The night before… before they disappeared.”
My throat went dry.
“Adam, are you sure?”
“Look at her handwriting, Dad. That’s Mom’s. I know it is.”
Ethan came down the stairs behind me, drawn by the noise.
“What’s going on down here? You both look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Look at her handwriting, Dad. That’s Mom’s.”
“Your brother found a disc,” I whispered. “Your mother left it. The night before.”
Ethan’s face drained of color.
“A disc? Dad, do we even have anything that plays those anymore?”
“The old laptop in the closet upstairs. Go get it. Quickly.”
He bolted up the stairs. Adam stayed beside me, his shoulder pressed against mine like he did when he was a little boy afraid of thunder.
“Dad, what if it’s something bad?”
“Your mother left it. The night before.”
“Then we face it together.”
“Twenty years, Dad. Twenty years and she hid this here?”
“I don’t know, son. I don’t know anything anymore.”
Ethan returned with the laptop. My hands shook so badly I could barely slide the disc into the drive.
“Let me, Dad,” Ethan said gently. “Sit down. Please.”
I sat on an overturned crate. The screen flickered. Then Laura appeared, alive, breathing, her eyes red from crying.
“Then we face it together.”
“Oh my God,” Adam whispered. “Mom…”
“My loves,” she began, “it hurts me to say this, but you need to know the whole truth.”
I gripped the edge of the crate.
“If you’re watching this, something has gone wrong, or I haven’t come back yet. Please don’t be angry with me.”
“Come back?” Ethan breathed. “What does she mean, come back?”
“Shhh. Listen.”
“It hurts me to say this, but you need to know the whole truth.”
“Diane has been pressuring me for months,” Laura continued, her voice cracking. “About my mother’s inheritance. The land, the accounts, all of it. She says it should have been hers.”
“Aunt Diane?” Adam said. “Our Aunt Diane?”
“She threatened to take the girls from me. She said she’d tell the courts I was unstable. I begged her to stop.”
I felt the room tilt.