Good.
That was what I wanted.
20
LENA
I left the manor before dawn.
Not because I had anywhere to be at five-thirty in the morning.Not because there was urgent business at the hotel that couldn’t wait until a reasonable hour.I left because I couldn’t stand the thought of running into him in the hallway, catching his scent on the air between us, having to make small talk over coffee while we both pretended we hadn’t torn chunks out of each other’s walls two nights ago.
The roads were empty.Winter darkness pressed against the windshield, broken only by my headlights.Ice glittered on the pavement.I drove too fast, taking the curves of the mountain road like something was chasing me.
Maybe something was.
The hotel lobby was a warm welcoming sight.Night shift staff looked up in surprise as I walked through, managing a smile for each of them.The automatic expression of someone trained since childhood to be pleasant at all times.
Inside, I was anything but.
I didn’t go to my father’s office.Not yet.Instead, I took the private elevator up to the apartment where I’d grown up.Where Marjorie still kept everything exactly as it had been, as if my father might walk through the door any moment, as if I might come back to stay.
The first thing I noticed was that the door was unlocked.
Marjorie never left the door unlocked.Not in all the years I’d known her.She’d grown up in a neighborhood where you learned to lock doors and check them twice, and thirty years of living in a luxury hotel apartment hadn’t changed that habit.
I pushed the door open slowly.“Marjorie?”
The living room looked wrong.It took me a moment to understand why.Books pulled from shelves.Drawers left open.The photograph of my parents’ wedding, the one that always sat on the mantle, lying face-down on the carpet.
Someone had been here.Someone had gone through our things.
“Marjorie?”My voice came out sharper, edged with fear.
“In here, sweetheart.”
I found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table instead of standing at the stove.Her hands were wrapped around a mug of tea that had gone cold.She was wearing her familiar blue robe, but it was buttoned wrong, and there were shadows under her eyes I’d never seen before.
“What happened?”
“I woke up around three.”Her voice was steady, but I could see her hands trembling.“Heard something in the living room.By the time I got up the courage to look, they were gone.”
“They broke in while you were sleeping?”The words came out hollow.This woman had raised me when my mother couldn’t.Had held me through nightmares, taught me to braid my hair, sat with me through every childhood illness.And someone had been in her home, going through her things, while she slept defenseless down the hall.
“They left something.”Marjorie nodded toward the counter.
A photograph lay there.Me, walking through the manor in my robe, taken from somewhere beyond the property line.The kind of image that shouldn’t exist, that meant someone had been watching with a telephoto lens, patient and purposeful.
Written on the back in red marker:I SEE EVERYTHING.
My stomach dropped.
“Marjorie, we need to call the police.”
“I already did.They came and went an hour ago.Took some photos, made some notes.”Her laugh was bitter, exhausted.“They said it was probably just teenagers.A prank.They didn’t seem particularly concerned about an old woman living alone.”
“This isn’t a prank.”I stared at the photograph, at the red letters that seemed to pulse against the white backing.“Someone’s been watching me.Someone got into your home.”
“I know, sweetheart.”Marjorie finally looked up at me, and I saw something in her eyes I’d never seen before.Fear.Real fear.“I know.”
