Relief transformed her face as she hurried down the steps. She wrapped him in a fierce embrace, her hands gripping the back of his jacket as if making sure he was solid and real. Annie’s chest tightened with an ache she hadn’t invited.
Jack stepped back and gestured. “Mom, this is Annie Whitaker.”
The woman turned, her eyes warm and searching as they took Annie in. “I’m Margaret Calloway. Maggie. I’m very glad you’re alive, Annie.”
“Thank you for letting me stay,” Annie said, suddenly aware of the soot still clinging to her shoes and the faint smell of smoke in her hair.
“Nonsense,” Maggie said, already ushering them toward the house. “Anyone Jack brings here is welcome. Come inside. You both look like you’ve walked out of a nightmare.”
Inside, the house wrapped around her like something solid and kind. Wood floors softened by rugs. Lamps casting gentle pools of light. Framed photographs lining the walls—Jack as a boy on a horse, Jack in a graduation cap, Jack between his parents, smiling in a way she’d never seen him smile.
Maggie guided them into the kitchen, where the scent of roast and bread still lingered. “Guest bathroom’s upstairs, Annie. Towels are laid out. There are clothes in the dresser that should fit well enough for tonight.”
The simple kindness nearly undid her.
Twenty minutes later, Annie stood alone in the bathroom, staring at her reflection. Clean. Changed. Wrapped in borrowed clothes that smelled faintly of lavender and soap. The woman in the mirror looked older than she remembered, eyes too large in a face drawn tight by fear and fatigue.
Her fingers slipped into the pocket of her ruined pajama pants, closing around the soft velvet pouch.
The locket.
The weight of it grounded her, even as it stirred the unease beneath her ribs. Eleanor Blackwood had worn it. Eleanor Blackwood had hidden something. Eleanor Blackwood had been afraid.
Annie went back downstairs.
She found Jack in the kitchen, speaking quietly with his father, who looked up and greeted her with the same steady warmth Maggie had shown. Dinner passed in a blur she barely tasted, her thoughts circling the locket, the fire, her uncle lying in a hospital bed because of something she had carried into her home.
Afterward, Jack led her past the house and toward a workshop behind the garage, its windows glowing white in the dark.
“Dad keeps his precision tools in here,” he said as he unlocked the door.
The workshop smelled of sawdust and oil and metal. The workbench stood scarred from years of projects, a magnifying lamp mounted at one end, drawers of tools lining the walls.
Annie placed the velvet pouch on the wood.
For a moment, neither of them touched it.
“I keep thinking about her,” Annie said quietly. “About Eleanor. The way she looks in that photograph. Like she was already carrying something no one else could see.”
Jack nodded. “Whatever’s in there, it frightened her badly enough to hide it where she hoped someone worthy might eventually find it.”
Annie loosened the drawstring and tipped the locket into her palm.
The metal gleamed softly under the light.
“If she was afraid,” Annie continued, “then what she hid wasn’t meant to explain everything. It was meant to survive.”
She set it on the bench between them.
“Let’s find out what she wanted to outlive her.”
***
Jack’s hands were steadier than he expected as he worked the thin metal awl into the hidden groove along the edge of the Victorian locket. Years on the force had trained him to remain precise even when adrenaline threatened to sabotage fine motor control, but this felt different from any piece of evidence he had ever handled. This object carried a personal gravity, a sense of proximity to the dead that went beyond professional detachment. Eleanor Blackwood had worn this. She had hidden something inside it knowing her life might depend on whether the truth survived her. And now Annie stood at his side, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her through the thin cotton of her sweater, close enough that every careful movement of his hands seemed to register in the quiet space between them.
The workshop behind his father’s garage hummed softly with fluorescent light and the faint vibration of running powersomewhere deeper in the building. The smell of sawdust and machine oil hung in the air, layered over the lingering smoke that still clung to his clothes no matter how many times he told himself he was safely out of that burning building. He was acutely aware of Annie’s presence, of the way she watched his hands, of the way she breathed as though she were afraid that too much movement might shatter whatever fragile balance held this moment together.
“Before we open it,” she said quietly, “I need to tell you something. That night four years ago, when I… when I told you how I felt…”
