My heart slams against my ribs. “Harry.” My voice thins to a whisper. I think back to the text I read today. And there’s only one conclusion I can come to. “As in Harrison? Klein?”
The room tilts; the floor feels miles away.
He flinches like he’s been shot, lips pressing together in regret for saying it out loud. He doesn’t speak, but his silence says enough.
I stumble a half step back, like the words physically hit me, too.
The man in the black house.
My father.
The drawings, the weirdness toward me in the tavern, the idea that he’s been lingering around me. However ludicrous, unbelievable… it makes sense now. But I stillcan’tbelieve it. I don’t want to.
“You know him?” Emmett looks shocked, then guilty again. “We only started talking again after your mom passed. He moved away for a while after you and your sister were born. He rented out his house—which used to be his parents’. This is where he grew up. So… he eventually came back.”
“And he’s been across the lake?” I ask. “Ever since? He watched me grow up from afar? And he chose not to actually be a part of our lives?”
Emmett lowers his gaze, taking a few steps closer. “He thought it was what your mom wanted after he left. He didn’t know how to fix it.”
“And he didn’t even try to,” I say, turning toward the door.
I think back to Amelia’s story, of Harrison and Mom fighting on his dock. Did they argue over his role as our father? Did he want to come back? Did she push him away?
“Imogen—”
“Thank you, Emmett. Really. But I need to go home,” I say, sniffing. “Tell him whatever you want.”
This past week, his actions, which I’ve considered eerie and foreboding, had a deeper significance. He wasn’t watching me so I could be his next victim, but instead—I imagine—to observe me; his biological creation in his midst for the first time since my teenhood.
And still, he was too chicken to do anything about it.
Suddenly, his text to Emmett makes sense.
I twist the doorknob, push into the gray-washed afternoon, and let the Holloway house disappear into the fog behind me.
I drop my keys on the entry table, and they clatter against the wood with a hollowness that echoes across the emptied house. My feet drag until they reach the center of the living room. Then they give out entirely and I collapse on the rug.
The tears come before I even register I’m crying again. One after another, they break loose, spilling hot down my face as I press my cheek into the soft, shabby chic rug.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice comes out small, ragged, aimed at no one and everything at once. “Why did you keep this from us?”
It sounds pathetic, hearing myself beg an empty room for answers. But I continue anyway, talking to Mom like her spirit is here.
“Did you think I didn’t deserve a dad? Or that I couldn’t handle the truth?” My voice cracks. “You were all I needed. But I deserved to know.”
I bury my face into my palms and rock, unsure if I’m angry at her, or at myself for not asking sooner.
When I finally push myself upright, I stumble toward the dining room. Wiping my eyes again, ready to persevere, push through the madness, I grab another box and fill it with wine from the dining room’s bar. I meditate in it, tempted to drown myself in each bottle. But I load it all up instead, and finally, I remove two candlesticks from the dining table, placing them at the top of the box. If I don’tkeep myself busy until Amelia comes home, until I can tell her everything, I’ll really lose it.
I plop the newly taped box on the dining table and stare at a scatter of pale flecks across the table’s surface—so faint I almost mistake them for dust motes caught in the dim light. There’s more in the center, atop the antique wood, settled deep into the grain like fine sand.
I lean in, dragging my fingertips gently across it, ready to brush them away. But they don’t smear like crumbs. They splinter and crackle beneath my skin.
Paint shavings.
My gaze sharpens. I straighten slowly and follow the trail upward.
Directly above the table, I see it: a square cutout in the ceiling—the attic door. Through the tiny crack where the panel doesn’t sit flat, a sliver of light gleams.
