Not only is this house on Mom’s street.
It’s directly next door.
36
IMOGEN
I whip in a full 360-degree twist to ensure there’s no one in the attic with me. And only then do I hoist myself up through the floor’s opening and crawl across the unfinished wood to examine the place. The floorboards creak beneath me, and the air tastes of dust and old insulation. I yank the frayed string dangling from the overhead bulb, and it flickers alive with a jaundiced glow, enough to paint the tiny room in a sickly light.
The first thing I see is a crumpled sandwich wrapper. Not just any wrapper, but the same kind of deli sandwich that had been mysteriously sitting in the fridge last week, the day we first arrived. But it’s nothing compared to what I find next. A black mesh bra. My bra. The one that’s been missing.
It’s folded neatly on the floor, almost reverently, and my stomach folds in on itself.
What the hell?
The image of the shadowed figure bolting through the dining room last night pops into my head, and my throat dries. Wasthiswhere they were hiding? Right above our heads?
I feel sick, vulnerable. Every instinct in me screams to get out. Instead, I crawl toward the papers scattered across the boards like a dropped deck of cards, corners curled from handling. The attic is otherwise barren—no boxes, no holiday decorations, no forgotten baby clothes. Just these papers, the wrapper, and my bra—like a sick breadcrumb trail.
I pluck out the nearest sheet with quivering hands.
Cascades Health Therapists & Psychiatrists of Seattle
They’re intake forms. For me. Dated back to 2003, when I was seven years old. Looking hard at the paper, I find the questionnaire portion, where it asks what the purpose of my visit is, clearly filled out by Mom. When I read the words, fear slaps me in the face. Memories follow—broken, jagged fragments, detonating behind my eyes like shrapnel.
It’s The Nightmare.
The recurring nightmare that has haunted me since childhood is no longer hazy; it isn’t replaying short clips of something unknown buried in my subconscious, nor is it entirely made up as I’d always imagined. It’s now a full picture—start to end.
In my hands are the missing documents from the manilla folder I found last Thursday in Mom’s file cabinet. The documents that should have been nestled into the file that read IMOGEN INCIDENT—2003. Somehow they’ve made their way up here, reviewed and ingested alongside a turkey sandwich by an unknown intruder. I find the file under one of the papers—the one I added to the KEEP stack after packing up the office. I hadn’t even noticed it was missing among Saturday’s chaos. Is this what they were looking for?
I force myself to read every last page, the entire story my momunspooled in the forms. Each detail strikes like a lash, memories buried deep—too dark for my developing brain to hold on to.
Now I remember what I did to that boy.
And what Parker Lane did to me first.
A sob wriggles up my throat, but I can’t keep it down. I pull my phone out of my pocket, checking for Amelia’s location. She’s approaching the neighborhood now, nearly home.
Thank God.
I’ve never needed her more. I can’t be here alone.
Tucking my phone away, I collect the papers, crinkling them with violently shaking fingers. My mouth floods with saliva, but I swallow it, trying not to gag. The stack clutched to my chest, I snag my bra but leave the sandwich wrapper exactly where it is—as if it’s radioactive, tainted by whoever crept into Mom’s attic.
Suddenly, I hear a noise from below. I pause, listening for more, but there’s nothing else.
Still, I’m hesitant when I lower myself back onto the dining table, exiting the attic.
And then I hear it again. A sharp, nearby rapping.
Someone’s knocking on the front door.
37
MEREDITH
Twenty-One Years Earlier
