Emily’s mother, Sarah, had died when Emily was seventeen. Her final months had been spent in a hospital, where she often held Emily’s hand and whispered that everything would be okay.
But now, standing in the darkness, Emily felt as though the past had somehow found its way back to her door.
She opened the envelope with trembling fingers.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
My dearest Emily,
If you’re reading this, it means the truth has finally found its way to you.
There is something I should have told you before I died. Something your father promised me he would never reveal.
Go to the old house on Willow Creek Road. Look beneath the loose floorboard in your childhood bedroom.
And whatever you do, don’t trust the story you’ve been told about the night I died.
Emily read the letter three times.
Her father had told her that her mother had died peacefully in her sleep.
What could possibly have happened that he hadn’t told her?
And who had delivered a letter written by a woman who had been dead for a decade?
At the bottom of the page was one final sentence.
I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from him.
Emily’s phone suddenly rang.
It was her father.
She answered, barely able to speak.
“Emily,” he said, his voice unusually tense. “Are you home?”
“Yes. What’s wrong?”
There was a long silence.
Then he asked a question that made her blood run cold.
