Upstairs, the hallway was lined with more photos—Jenna and Piper as toddlers in matching overalls, as gap-toothed eight-year-olds holding fishing poles, as teenagers with braces and self-conscious smiles.Piper moved slowly past each one, as if assembling pieces of a scattered puzzle.
At the end of the hall stood a closed door.Piper stopped before it, her hand hovering over the knob.
“Your room,” Mom said softly.“I’ve kept it...mostly the same.”
Piper took a deep breath and pushed the door open.The bedroom beyond was frozen in time—twin beds with matching quilts, walls painted a soft lavender, posters of bands long disbanded still hanging where they had been taped twenty years ago.A bookshelf held well-thumbed paperbacks, their spines cracked and faded.On the dresser sat a collection of small glass animals, positioned exactly as Piper had left them.
“Oh,” Piper breathed, stepping inside.Her fingers trailed over the surfaces—the dresser, the bedpost, the books—as if to confirm their reality.
Jenna lingered in the doorway, struck by the strangeness of seeing her sister in this preserved shrine to their shared adolescence.They had been sixteen when Piper vanished—still children in so many ways, on the cusp of becoming women.The room reflected the people they had been, not who they had become.
Piper sat on the edge of one bed—her bed—and bounced slightly, testing the mattress.“It feels the same,” she said with a small, wondering laugh.
Jenna moved to sit beside her.For a moment, they just sat in silence, shoulders touching, taking in the room that had witnessed their whispered secrets, their childish arguments, their dreams for futures that had unfolded in ways neither could have predicted.
“Piper,” Jenna began, her voice gentle but determined.“There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for twenty years.”
“Why I left?”
“Yes.”
Mom leaned against the doorframe, her eyes fixed on her returned daughter.
Piper’s gaze dropped.“It was because of the darkness.”
“So you were running from the darkness?”Mom asked, her voice strained.
Piper shook her head.“No, Mom.It’s hard to remember exactly—but I think I was trying to take it away.The darkness.To protect you from it.From me.”Her voice broke on the final word.“I guess I thought if I left, if I went far away, the darkness would follow me and leave all of you safe.”
Jenna felt a chill.“You thought you were protecting us by disappearing?”
“I think so.I guess I thought I might hurt all of you … somehow.”
Jenna reached for her sister’s hand.“Piper, I hope you know now that isn’t true.You’re not a danger to us.Those communications you have—they can be frightening, but they don’t make you harmful.”
Uncertainty lingered in Piper’s eyes.“I want to believe that.But sometimes I still feel it—the darkness, waiting.And the voices still find me, no matter where I go.”
Jenna ached to tell Piper that she understood, that she experienced visitations in her lucid dreams.But she hesitated.Piper was still finding her footing in a world that had continued without her for twenty years; adding the revelation of Jenna’s parallel gift might be too much, too soon.
Before Jenna could formulate a response, Piper stiffened, her grip on Jenna’s hand suddenly painful.Her eyes widened, focusing on something beyond the physical confines of the bedroom.
“Piper?”Mom stepped forward, alarmed.“What is it?”
Piper’s breathing grew shallow, her skin paling to an ashen hue.She swayed slightly where she sat, and Jenna put an arm around her shoulders to steady her.
“Someone’s here,” Piper whispered.“Trying to tell me something.”
“What are they saying?”Jenna asked quietly.Mom stood as if frozen in the doorway.
Piper’s eyes remained unfocused, her body rigid.“Red is for rage,” she said, her voice changed somehow, flatter and more distant.“Red is for rage.”
The phrase sent a shiver through Jenna.There was something ominous in the words, something that resonated with her sheriff’s instincts.But before she could ask Piper to explain, to elaborate on what the message might mean, her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Reluctantly, Jenna released Piper’s hand and checked the caller ID.Jake.She hesitated, torn between her duty as sheriff and her concern for her sister.
“I should take this,” she said apologetically.“Jake wouldn’t call unless it was important.”
Mom nodded, moving to take Jenna’s place beside Piper, who was blinking rapidly as if returning from a trance.
