Chapter 1
I slapped my 7-year-old daughter so hard my palm stung for ten seconds after.
I never meant to do it.
I’d just hung up from a work call that had chewed me up and spit me out—two hours of yelling, of threats to fire me if I didn’t fix a mess someone else made. My shoulders were up by my ears, my jaw tight enough to crack a tooth.
Then Lily threw my bedroom door open.
No knock. No warning. Just her small frame barrelling in, holding a crumpled crayon drawing high above her head like a trophy.
“Mommy, look! I made us a family with rainbow hair!”
I snapped.
My hand moved before my brain caught up.
The crack of skin on skin was loud. Too loud.
Lily stumbled back. Her eyes went wide, then flooded. The drawing fluttered to the floor. She didn’t make a sound for three whole heartbeats, then she wailed—a raw, hurt noise that cut right through me.
She turned and ran down the hall, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.
I followed.
I was still buzzing, still angry, ready to yell about respect and knocking and how you don’t just burst into people’s rooms. I didn’t even feel guilty yet. Not really.
Lily reached the living room.
She grabbed the custom linen sofa cover Daniel had gotten us for our 10th anniversary—the one I fussed over, the one no one was allowed to eat on.
She hauled it back with every ounce of strength her 49-pound body had.
She threw it as hard as she could across the room.
The heavy oak sofa base shifted.
It made a low, grinding thud against the hardwood floors, the kind of noise that means something heavy is moving where it shouldn’t.
A panel I’d never seen before slid open on the side facing the wall.
A man tumbled out onto the cream rug.
He gasped for air like he’d been holding his breath for hours. His clothes were rumpled, his hair too long, his face pale as paper.
My throat slammed shut.
I couldn’t breathe.
Lily stopped crying instantly. Her tiny hand clamped so tight over her mouth her knuckles turned white. Her eyes were huge, fixed on the stranger on our floor.
Daniel ran in from the garage, wiping grease on his jeans from fixing the lawnmower.
He froze.
His hand stilled on the doorframe. The grease rag slipped from his fingers and landed on the floor with a soft thud.
The man scrambled back, pressing himself against the sofa leg. He refused to lift his head.
“Daniel,” I said.
My voice cracked so bad I barely recognized it.
“Who is this?”
Daniel didn’t answer.
His knuckles went white where he gripped the wood. I heard the frame groan under his fingers.
The stranger lifted his head.
His eyes locked straight onto mine.
I knew those eyes.
I’d know them if I was blindfolded. If a hundred years passed. If they were the last thing I ever saw.
It was Ethan.
My older brother.
The one we buried in Austin three years ago. The one the police said died in a fiery highway crash, the one we’d cried over at his funeral, the one I’d visited every month at his grave to leave his favorite beer.
My legs went weak.
“You said he died,” I whispered.
I turned slowly to Daniel, like I was moving through water. Every step felt like it took a year.
Daniel’s face crumpled.
He slid down the wall until he was sitting hard on the floor, his back against the drywall. Tears spilled down his face before he even spoke.
“I couldn’t tell you,” he choked out. “He had nowhere else to go.”
I stared at him.
“Three years,” I said.
I stepped back until my calves hit the coffee table. The edge dug into my skin, but I didn’t feel it.
“He’s been living in our house for three years?”
Lily tugged on the hem of my shirt.
Her voice was barely a whisper, so small I almost missed it.
“Mommy, I saw him before. In the kitchen at night.”
My blood ran cold.
I’d held her while she cried about the man in the walls. I’d stroked her hair and told her it was just a bad dream, just her imagination. I’d even made Daniel check the attic twice.
I’d called my own daughter a liar.
“Every time you left for your work trips to Houston,” Daniel said. His voice broke again. “He’d come out to eat. To shower. I left food out for him. I made sure he had water.”
I stared into the dark compartment behind the sofa.
A folded blanket peeked out. A half-empty water bottle. A crumpled bag of pretzels.
I thought of all the nights I woke up sure I heard footsteps down the hall.
I thought of the leftovers that vanished from the fridge, the silver locket I’d thought I lost at the gym, the way the shower was sometimes damp when I got home even though Daniel swore he hadn’t used it.
Daniel had blamed our cleaning lady.
I’d fired her last spring.
I’d screamed at her for stealing, for being lazy, for not doing her job. She’d cried and begged me to reconsider, and I’d slammed the door in her face.
“Why?” I screamed.
The sound bounced off the high ceilings. It came out raw, feral, nothing like my voice.
“Why would you do this to me? To our daughter? You let me think my brother was dead! You let me grieve him! You turned our house into a prison and you didn’t even tell me!”
Daniel opened his mouth to answer.
The sharp click of a key in the front lock cut him off.
We all froze.
No one else was supposed to be home today.
The door creaked open.
A woman’s voice called out, soft and warm and sickeningly familiar.
“Daniel? I brought the extra blankets Ethan asked for. Is Sarah still stuck at the office?”
My blood turned to slush in my veins.
I knew that voice.
May you like
I’d known it my whole life.
It was my mother.
