Lily’s heart lurched.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Carol had gone out again. Maybe—
Footsteps crossed the kitchen overhead. Heavier than Carol’s. Familiar.
“Carol?” a man called.
Lily went still.
Her father.
She scrambled upright so fast pain knifed through her legs.
Upstairs, Evan’s voice sounded tired but ordinary. “Job wrapped early. Thought I’d beat the traffic.”
Carol answered too quickly. “You’re home.”
Something in her tone made Lily start pounding the crate bars with both hands.
The metal clanged.
Above, silence.
Then Carol laughed—a tight, brittle sound. “The dryer’s been making that weird noise again.”
Lily hit the bars harder. “Dad!”
Her voice cracked on the word.
Footsteps moved across the floor overhead.
Evan said, sharper now, “Was that Lily?”
“No,” Carol said. “She’s at Emily Donnelly’s. I told you, stomach bug, then Mrs. Donnelly offered to keep her so I could—”
“Why is her backpack by the stairs?”
A beat.
Lily did not breathe.
The next seconds happened in a blur of sound. Fast footsteps. Carol saying something too low to catch. Evan’s voice—“Move.” The basement door slamming open so hard it hit the wall.
He came down the steps two at a time.
Lily had never seen his face like that before. Not at the funeral home after Rachel died. Not after the truck accident when his shoulder had to be surgically repaired. Not even the night he put Sadie down and cried in the garage because he didn’t want Lily to see.
He looked not angry at first but blank, as if his mind refused the shape of what his eyes were seeing.
The light from the stairwell fell across the crate, across Lily curled in the blanket, across the paint bucket, the paper towels, the brass padlock.
“Dad,” she whispered.
