I see him watching us. Quiet, calculating.
He said something yesterday: I'm not a fool, you know. Just that. Nothing more. But it chilled me to the bone.
Some days, this house feels like a cage I built for myself. I breathe borrowed air. I speak borrowed lines.
I wish someone could tell me what to do.
Ellie stared down at the journal in her lap, her fingers still pressed to the edge of the page as if she was afraid to let go of it.
“So, what’s first?” I asked.
Ellie opened her phone and started scrolling. “Okay, I looked up L. Lauren. From this, we definitely know her son wasn’t her husband’s. Let’s see if we can find anything about her. Old social media, friends, news articles, maybe high school stuff. We need to find her to find him. Maybe there’s something that can give us a clue. Whoever he is, I’m guessing he’s the key.”
I folded my arms. “How old was she when all this went down?”
“Mid-thirties, I think,” she said without missing a beat, still searching, “based on records I found.”
“So probably a little older than me.” I lifted an eyebrow.
Ellie looked up with a smirk. “Wait, how old are you?
“Thirty-three.”
“Wow, you’re ancient.”
“Hey, I’m still young enough to keep up with you.”
“Yeah, cause twenty-five is so young.”
I laughed. “When I was twenty-five, my knees didn’t sound like an old, creaky floor every time I moved. Alright, smart ass. So, on the agenda, we need to find this mystery guy and see if Lauren’s still around.”
“Yup. There are no obituaries for her, no death certificates. She’s probably alive.” She swiped to a new note on her phone. “I’ll keep checking public records, old news reports fromthat time, and cross-reference anything about the husband. Something has to show up.”
I raised a brow. “An interesting way to spend Christmas Eve.”
She grinned. “Think of it as the coziest cold case in history.”
I reached for the blanket draped over the back of the couch and tossed it over both of us. “Fine, but first, we need hot cocoa and cookies. And you’re not allowed to get murder-board crazy until next time.”
She scooted closer, her knee bumping mine as she turned the screen toward me. For a second, I forgot about everything else—forgot about the story, the journal, the tragedy of what had happened in this house. I was just watching her get excited, lighting up like the Christmas lights I’d strung on the porch.
She was beautiful when she was curious.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” she said, eyes scanning the screen. “This is the article from six years ago. A domestic incident on Maplewood Lane.”
Four-year-old boy dead in Domestic Dispute Tragedy.
We sat there, and then Ellie turned toward me, her features softer now, a little more tentative.
“I know you didn’t buy this house because of what happened here,” she murmured. “But maybe…there’s a reason it ended up in your hands.”
“I don’t know if I believe in fate.”But I believe in you.“But I’m on your side, and if this is something you want to figure out, I’m in.”
Her lips parted as if she might say something, but instead, she bumped her shoulder against mine. “Thanks, fake boyfriend.”
I grinned. “You’re welcome, fake girlfriend.”
We spent hours combing through everything we could find online—old news articles, public records, social media scraps, anything that might give us a sliver of a clue about theHutchinson family and what really happened that night. We found out that Lauren’s father had worked for her husband’s father for years, and the two of them were married young.
