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Headlights.

A dark sedan idles at the far end of the gravel drive, windows blacked out, engine purring low like a predator’s breath. It’s not Frank.

My stomach coils, cold and tight. The room feels smaller. The house feels too quiet.

And that’s when something catches my eye.

The end of the hallway, my father’s office door.

It’s open. A soft light spills out onto the hallway.

I never leave it open.

That door is a boundary. My boundary. A line drawn with silence and steel. He stays on his side, contained and irrelevant. I can’t stand the sight of him, slumped in that hospital bed, more wires than will, skin stretched over bones that once punished.

I keep the door shut like the lid on a coffin, and I’m the one holding the nails.

He doesn’t get to see me. He doesn’t get to know more than what’s absolutely necessary.

Keeping that door closed is the only power I still hold. It’s my refusal to be available, to be pulled into his orbit, to become something small under his eyes again.

He only enters my world when I open that door. And that happens only when I decide it’s time.

But now it’s open.

The light spills into the hall like a wound.

I move down the hallway, slow and silent, each floorboard beneath my feet creaking just enough to feel like a warning.

I pause just outside the doorway. My palm grazes the frame as I push the door open, my pulse ticking in my throat.

The smell is stronger inside. Not overwhelming but clinging. Like the room has been scrubbed of memory, but not enough.

And then I see him.

My father.

Awake.

Eyes wide and glassy in the shadows. Staring.

Straight at me.

My breath stutters. He doesn’t move. Can’t move. But the way his eyes lock onto mine, there’s no question.

Someone was in here.

I don’t say anything. Just meet his gaze. One heartbeat. Two. Then I step backward into the dark and pull the door closed. Not slamming it, sealing it.

He doesn’t get to watch me.

Not now.

Not again.

I turn toward the back door and slip out into the trees. The night presses in, cool and damp, full of pine and loam and the old feral hum of the woods.

The sedan hasn’t moved. I crouch low behind a cedar and wait, knife in hand, lungs tight.