1
Coastal fog curled along the eaves of the Honeywell house, softening the roofline and muting the quiet street below. Holly Honeywell stood in the doorway, her fingers wrapped around the tarnished knob as she breathed in the frigid air. The house had sat empty since her mother Celia’s death a month before, and yet it felt alive in ways Holly couldn’t explain, memories lingering like shadows waiting for her return.
Holly stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and the scent hit her first—lemon oil her mother used when she was cleaning. At twenty-two, Holly never thought she’d lose her mother so soon, or that her death would uncover a deep-rooted secret.
Two weeks earlier, while sorting through the house, Holly had opened a shoebox buried at the back of her mother’s bedroom closet. The plain box filled with a stack of documents soon rattled her entire world when adoption papers were discovered at the bottom.
Holly had built her entire life on the belief that Celia was her biological mother. The papers shattered that belief with one brutal truth. Soon after she’d started searching for answers, growing desperate for one that made sense. So far, all roads had led to closed doors and dead ends. The agency that handled her adoption was no longer in business and hadn’t been in some time. And the people in her mother’s life claimed they didn’t know she’d been adopted.
A few days before, when she’d stopped by the shuttered adoption agency, she had a feeling she couldn’t shake. A feeling like someone was watching her. But when she turned, looking up and down the street, no one was there. At first, she dismissed it, but then it happened again when she was speaking to Roxy, one of her mother’s closest friends.
It was as if someone knew she’d been digging into her past.
If her mother had concealed the adoption, what else had been kept from her? The thought weighed on her as she eased out of her shoes and lay her coat across the sofa. She glanced at the Christmas tree in front of the living room window and the presents resting beneath it, presents her mother didn’t live long enough to see her open.
Holly pressed a hand to her hip and sighed. She had torn through every room in the house during her search to find answers, and only one place remained untouched—the attic.
The floor groaned under her feet as she made her way to the end of the hall. She reached up, gripped the latch, and pulled until the attic stairs dropped to the floor. She climbed the narrow steps and stepped inside. Boxes filled the space, stacked in uneven towers beside clothes her mother hadn’t worn in years, and a tired old dresser that had been pushed against the far wall.
She moved to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Socks and scarves lay folded beside a small journal with softened corners. She turned the pages and found her mother’s recipes written in her familiar hand. The drawers below offered much of the same, only more dead ends that led her nowhere.
A cold draft brushed across Holly’s neck, and she froze. The house had always been drafty, but something about the movement in the air made her skin crawl. She leaned toward the attic’s opening, glancing below. The hallway stretched before her, the same narrow space she had walked through thousands of times, but today it felt smaller and darker somehow.
Thinking she was being dramatic, Holly swished a hand through the air, trying to sweep away the unease building inside her. She had locked the front door when she arrived. She had checked the rooms. She was alone.
Wasn’t she?
Half an hour later, emptyhanded and drained, she climbed down the attic steps and sealed the latch. She turned toward the living room, surprised to see her shoes had shifted. One lay crooked, tipped as though someone had stumbled over it.
Her fingers tightened around her cell phone, and for a moment, she considered making a call. Then a soft sound broke the silence.
Not a creak.
Not the house settling.
The sound of footsteps.
Holly spun around, her voice shaky. “Hello?”
There was no answer.
She backed away from the sound, her heart pounding hard in her chest. Her heel struck something, and when she looked down, she saw a small, framed photograph on the floor—her mother holding her as a baby.
How had it fallen off the wall?
Two things out of place made it clear she wasn’t alone, and she bolted toward the front door. She reached it and grabbed the lock, her fingers trembling. A figure moved behind her, and Holly gasped, turning so fast, the room seemed to spin around her. A hand seized her arm, and she felt a shooting pain in her shoulder. She wrestled from side to side, trying to fight her attacker off.
“Who are you?” she screamed. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Holly jerked back, and as her attacker’s hand smacked against the side of her face, she fell to the floor, her bruised cheek pressed against the cold hardwood. Her gaze drifted toward the photograph, to her mother’s face smiling back at her as if everything was calm.
But it wasn’t calm, and Holly feared it might never be again.
Blood pooled along her gumline as she tried to focus on the figure hovering over her. A shadow filled her vision, broad shoulders blocking the light.
“Please,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
The shadowy assailant lowered to a crouch, close enough for her to feel warm breath on her skin. She pressed against the door, trying to push herself upright, but a hand clamped down on her shoulder, forcing her back.
