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The past has a way of pretending it's finished with you. Until it isn't.

Outside, the crisp autumn air carries the scent of wood smoke and fallen leaves. Tourists crowd Main Street beneath banners proclaiming 11 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN. Children laugh as a man dressed as the Headless Horseman poses for photographs. A street musician plays a fiddle near the town square.

Everything looks normal. Too normal.

I unlock my SUV and toss the files onto the passenger seat. Before climbing in, I unfold the printed map Molly included. One address is circled in blue ink.

Wren Cottage. Hollow Lane.

My thumb rests on the circle. The wolf stirs. Not violently. Curiously. Like it has caught a familiar scent carried on the wind.

I close my eyes for the briefest moment. Control. One breath. Then another. Whatever waits at that cottage…

I'm going there as an investigator. Not as the man Carys Wren once knew.

I start the engine. The navigation screen lights up. I don't need it. I remember the way. I only wish I didn't.

5

CARYS

OCTOBER 20 ~ 11 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

Ihave spent most of my adult life telling people the truth they don't want to hear. It's the foundation of Hollow Truths.

People send me their secrets because they know I won't comfort them with lies. They don't need someone to tell them everything will magically work out.

They need someone willing to look at the situation objectively and say:

This is what is happening.

This is what it means.

This is what you do next.

The problem is that objectivity becomes much harder when the impossible is sitting across from you at your kitchen table.

Morrow has been asleep for three hours. Or pretending to be. I know the difference. The same way I know when someone writing to Hollow Truths is asking for advice versus asking for permission.

Morrow isn't sleeping. He's waiting. Waiting for me to tell him he was wrong. Waiting for me to tell him he imagined everything. Waiting for me to send him back into a world where the people he trusted disappeared.

I hate that I understand him. I hate even more that I don't know what to do. So I do what I always do when I don't understand something. I research.

My office has become a disaster zone. Not the organized chaos my readers imagine when they picture Hollow Truths headquarters. Actual chaos. Printed documents cover my desk. Open browser windows fill both monitors. My coffee has gone cold for the third time. I have searched everything I can think of.

Morrow Valentine. Timothy Valentine. Rebecca Valentine. Adoption records. Missing persons reports. News archives. Every search gives me pieces. None of them fit together.

According to public records, Timothy and Rebecca Valentine are exactly who they claim to be.

Married twenty-one years. No criminal history. No financial issues. No major disputes. No reason to disappear.

Their neighbors describe them as quiet. Reliable. Normal. That word again.

Normal.

People use it like it means safety. It doesn't.

Normal is simply what we call things before we know better.