“Did someone leave a letter at your door tonight?”
Chapter 2: The House on Willow Creek Road
Emily didn’t answer.
“Emily?” her father repeated. “Listen to me carefully. Don’t go anywhere tonight.”
“How do you know about the letter?”
He exhaled sharply.
“Because some things are better left in the past.”
Then he hung up.
Emily stood motionless in the kitchen, staring at her phone.
For ten years, she’d believed her father, Richard Carter, was the one person she could trust completely. He had raised her alone, worked long hours, and never remarried.
He had always told her that her mother loved her more than anything.
Now, for the first time, Emily wondered whether the man who had raised her had also been hiding something terrible.
At sunrise, she drove to Willow Creek Road.
The old family house had been sold shortly after her mother’s funeral. Since then, it had stood empty, its windows boarded up and its garden swallowed by weeds.
Emily parked beside the gate.
The front door was unlocked.
Inside, dust covered the furniture, and the air smelled of damp wood. She walked upstairs to the bedroom where she’d spent her childhood.
Everything looked smaller than she remembered.
