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“I still wanna be like my older brother to this day,” Lexington interjected as he pulled my desk chair over to us and took a seat. “Big brothers remain just as cool, even as you get older.”

“You have a brother?” Silas asked, curious, tucking the photo into his pocket.

Lexington nodded. “Oliver. He works here with us, actually. He’s probably the only reason I still have a job, if I’m being honest.”

I rolled my eyes and stuck my hand out to him. “Give me those photos and we can talk about your job performance later.”

Lexington laughed, but handed me the folder. Silas looked between the two of us curiously, but didn’t say anything. I pulled out the photos, the stack far too heavy for my liking.

“Are these just the kids, or their parents, too?” I asked Lexington.

“All the victims,” he explained. “We’ll need to sort through them.”

“Their parents died, too?” Silas asked quietly.

I turned to him in surprise and nodded. “You didn’t know?”

He shook his head. “I knew mine did, but I had hoped it wasn’t like that for anyone else.” He fiddled with his backpack before unzipping it and pulling out a well-loved notebook. “I started writing down the stories after we talked—figured I could get ahead.”

“Then let’s get started.”

The three of us spent the next few hours talking about these kids who lost their lives in that dark hole. I had expected it to be heart-wrenching, hearing about the dark days that ended their lives. But it wasn’t. While Silas did write down when they died and what he could recall, he mostly talked about the few moments of joy he had found with them: the songs they would sing together when the dark was scary, the games they would play, even stories they shared with one another.

It was pages and pages of notes that Lexington and I took, wanting to document every detail we could for the families who were desperate for it. Silas had remembered it all incredibly well; I was impressed. He could recount details down to eye colors, the pajamas they came in, even the exact number of days he spent with each of them. His memories lined up with the evidence perfectly, and we were slowly able to build a timeline as he spoke. While it didn’t bring us any closer to finding the man responsible, it was more than we had this morning.

“Was it only ever two of you together?” I asked after we wrapped up another story about a little girl who was taken. She had spent three months with Silas.

He nodded. “Either two of us, or I was by myself. I asked why once. I used to ask him a lot of questions. Usually he didn’t give me an answer.”

“Did he this time?” Lexington asked cautiously.

“Not really—kind of, I guess? He said he was looking for the right pair. He said I was right, but he had to replace the other one,” Silas explained, looking up at me. “It was the third time he talked to me.”

“Who was this other one?” I asked.

Silas shrugged. “He never explained. I always figured it was one of the kids before me. I didn’t know them, but it was obvious they had lived down there, too. I remember waking up in that room—the same one you woke up in,” he explained softly, his gaze briefly glancing at me. “But I was alone. It was pitch black and cold. It took me a while to move, to do anything. After a while I found ticks on the wall. Someone had scratched them—I think it was the number of days someone had been down there. There weren’t a lot.”

I hadn’t thought about the fact that so many kids woke up alone. Everyone before Silas had. But once he came around, he acted as a friend—the last friend for so many. Even for me, he was there the moment I woke up, doing his best to bring me whatever comfort he could.

“Goldie?” Silas asked.

“Yeah, kid?” I muttered, half-distracted.

“Why did he take you?” he asked. His question got Lexington’s attention as he leaned in slightly, as if it would help him hear my answer better. “The rest of us were kids, but you weren’t. So why you?”

I swallowed and glanced at Lexington. I had a feeling he knew the full story now; hell, he knew my full name, so he must have. But we hadn’t talked about it in depth. I had never talked about it. I rifled through the photos, searching for the one with the familiar faces and the young girl with dark eyes—they were almost black. The one of me. I handed it to Silas. “Marigold Taylor. For so long, she was the only survivor.”

“She got out of that place, too?” Silas asked excitedly.

I shook my head. “Not exactly. The man broke into her house that night, the same way he did yours. He snuck through, trying to find her parents' room. What he didn’t know was that little Marigold never slept well and was awake in her room, playing quietly. She saw him sneak past. She heard him kill her parents, and she hid, crawling into her laundry basket because it was the only place she could reach. She hid there for over a day, refusing to move, barely even breathing. It wasn’t until her dad didn’t go into work that they came to find out why. They found him and her mom in their room. They searched and searched, and eventually she crawled out of her hiding place.”

Silas’s attention was locked onto me, and I could feel the weight of Lexington’s gaze, but I couldn’t look over at him. I continued my story, the words spilling freely after being held back for years.

“Because no one knew why or who had killed her parents, she was protected—sent to live with her uncle after some time. She stayed there for a few years and finally moved here after meeting a young journalist who had kind eyes.” I smiled to myself, thinking about Oliver all those years ago.

“She’s you?” Silas asked. “You’re Marigold?”

I nodded. “No one called me that. I was always Goldie. When I moved here I changed my name to it legally, I didn’t want anyone to dig up the case of my parents or who I really was.”