Her hand closed around the knob and stayed there.
The pause stretched. Her shoulders locked, her spine went rigid. Her thumb moved once across the brass of the knob—slow, almost unconscious—the way you’d touch something you already knew by heart.
Then she turned the knob and pushed the door open.
The study inside sat completely undisturbed. No windows. Floor-to-ceiling shelves held old books and medical journals stacked in boxes. A faded rug, a heavy desk, the chair tucked in so precisely it looked like someone had stepped away five minutes ago and expected to return. The air held the stillness of a room that hadn’t been breathed in for a very long time.
“This works,” I murmured.
I reached past Libby and switched off the hallway light. Darkness settled over all of us. As my eyes adjusted, I looked at her.
Her face had drained of color, going beyond the baseline exhaustion I’d already noted, into something raw. Her green eyes, vivid even in the gloom, focused on a place the dead outside couldn’t touch. It was as if watching a ghost stare at its own grave, and whatever put her there wasn’t finished with her yet.
Libby slipped away to gather bedding. Lily went further into the room looking at the shelves. I waited until both were out of earshot, then turned to Fiona and dropped my voice to a whisper, barely moving the air between us.
“What am I missing?”
Fiona watched the empty hallway for a moment before answering.
“Not really my story to tell,” she whispered back.
I didn’t push. Instead, I looked at the study: the desk with the chair tucked in just so, the shelves undisturbed for what must have been years, the door Libby had stood outside with her hand on the knob, her whole body braced as if she expected it to hit back.
I let out a slow breath.
It didn’t need to be her story tonight, anyway.
Six
The Hallway Tilted. Everything Tilted - Libby
My hands shook as I moved down the hallway.
Blankets. Just get the blankets. Keep moving. Keep your shit together.
With each step, the house tightened around me, the air thickening, pressing against my skin the closer I got to the linen closet. An old ache crept in.
Not now. Please, not now.
I yanked the closet door open harder than I meant to, grabbing at the stack inside and nearly pulling everything down on top of me. Fabric spilled over my arms, soft and clean and completely wrong against the pressure building in my chest.
That room.
Of all the rooms in this house, it had to be thatone.
My breath hitched. I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing my back against the wall beside the closet, holding myself still.
The memory came anyway.
The study door closing. The soft click of the latch catching. His voice—low and unhurried, with something pulling at me to stand closer to the door, even then, even before I’d let myself understand why. Him with his odd quality of calm, the kind that never meant safety. Lily’s face afterward. Small. Quiet. Something behind her eyes went dark; one moment there and extinguished the next.
My stomach turned so hard my knees buckled. I caught myself against the wall, palms flat against the wood paneling, fingers pressing in until my nails bent.
“I protected her,” I whispered, the words barely carrying. “I protected her.”
But guilt had never been a thing that words could reach. It simply sat lodged in the middle of my chest, living for the past ten years, patient and immovable.
The blankets slipped from my arms and hit the floor.
