I read her employment history, but there was only one place listed before here, a few years earlier: in Ohio.

A wave of intense nausea washed over me—a darkness, settling in my limbs, before everything went numb.

My hand shook as I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my call log. I moved back in time to more than a week ago, to before the box arrived. The only number that didn’t have a contact attached. That out-of-the-blue call that had caught me off guard, like whiplash: Is this Arden Maynor, daughter of Laurel Maynor? Ms. Maynor, I’m afraid we have some bad news—

Every nerve was firing as I called that number back now.

When that man had called, I hadn’t asked for specifics, too caught by the shock of the moment. I had accepted what he said at face value: that they had taken care of everything, and all that was left were her possessions. It was part of my past, and I’d wanted to keep it there. There was nothing I could do about it now. I couldn’t get off that call fast enough.

I held my breath one second, two, as the number processed. It was late; I expected the call to go to an answering service, but I needed to hear who it belonged to.

It rang once, and then I heard it: a muffled echo.

I put the phone down. Dropped it to my side. Listened, my nerves on fire, my heart in overdrive, as another phone rang, in echo—from somewhere down the hall.

I stumbled to the end of the hall, into my bedroom, looking for the source. Another ring—in the closet, on a shelf. In that box.

The phone that I’d ignored—the old flip phone, useless, presumably dead.

Someone had turned it on. The screen was lit up and ringing.

I sank to the floor, feeling four walls closing in and not caring, not caring at all. I opened the phone, checked the outgoing call log. The only thing that existed, not deleted, were calls, one right after the other, on the night of Sean Coleman’s death.

Like someone had stood just outside this closet, with the window open, watching me there. Watching me and wanting me to wake—or wanting someone to find me there with the body. Calling the number until I heard it. Until I woke.

Not Nathan Coleman but a woman. A woman with long brown hair, disproportionate to her small frame, and a too-wide smile—standing there, like I’d summoned her.

The moment I had feared for years.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting on the floor when I heard the footsteps.

A flurry of movement under my bedroom window.

I stood, silently walking through my bedroom, to listen but not be heard. There was movement coming from outside the house, but there were barely any lights on inside. I couldn’t be seen.

And then: the creak of a wooden step out back.

I remembered waiting on Rick’s couch, waiting for the police. The time stretching and contracting when he told me: It takes so long for help to get here.

911 DISPATCH CALL CENTER TO CENTRAL VALLEY POLICE DEPARTMENT

DATE: AUGUST 28, 2020

TIME STAMP: 9:21 P.M.

911 DISPATCHER: We’ve got a report of a home invasion happening at 23 Old Heart Lane. Unidentified female. The call disconnected and we can’t make contact again.

POLICE DISPATCH: Copy. Is caller still inside?

911: Yes, single female inside the house. She said she was trapped.

PD: Sending units to 23 Old Heart Lane. Any further information?

911: That’s all we got before the line went dead.

CHAPTER 27

Friday, 9:20 p.m.

I CLOSED THE BEDROOM DOOR, grabbed the ladder from the closet, hand on the hook-and-eye latch. Ready, waiting, ear pressed to the wooden door.

Listening for the rattle of that back door. Or the sound of breaking glass. But there was silence.

I opened the bedroom door again, slipped out into the dark hall. Other than a dim bulb left on in the corner of the kitchen, only the television glowed in flashes of light. I padded barefoot down the hall toward the entrance of the kitchen, peered around the corner, but couldn’t see anything out the window, into the night—the back porch light was still out.

But I heard the moment the key slid into the lock, the latch turning, and then the creak of the back door swinging open.

I held my breath. Eight steps to the front door. Car keys on the entryway table. Three steps across the front porch. Seventeen steps to the car.

All I could see out back was her silhouette, illuminated, until she stepped inside.

I saw her before she saw me, clinging to the corner of the hall, in the shadows. Her long hair was pulled back now, and she wasn’t wearing the glasses from her photo. She was smaller than I remembered, all sharp angles. I saw her look to the counter, where the wine bottle sat, still open. She picked up the empty glass, peering inside.

“Mom?” I asked, stepping out of the shadows.

Because there was still the chance that this was the drugs and the wine; that this was the nightmare. Not that she’d sent me that box herself, setting up that call, convincing someone else to make it, convincing me that she was dead.

But then she spun around, setting down the empty glass, and there was no going back.

This was the person Rick had heard me yelling at—shouting to get away from me.

The familiar laughter I’d heard at the hospital; that voice leading the detective to my office. A moment I had been expecting, subconsciously, for years. So close and yet continually out of sight.

“Hi, baby,” she said, her face splitting open in that too-wide grin.

“Mom,” I said, “what did you do?” There were so many layers to that question. What had she done, to Elyse, to Sean Coleman—to me, twenty years earlier.

“I kept you safe,” she said, walking toward me. “You’re safe now. This can all be over. Here.” She gestured toward the table, expecting me to be malleable and compliant. “Sit, sit.”

She’d thought I’d finished the glass. She’d thought I was under the influence of whatever she’d been drugging me with. Watching, learning my routine. Had she sneaked into my unlocked office, copying the key to my house? It wouldn’t be hard. Anyone with a badge would have access. I’d been too trusting, too complacent, in my new life, thinking myself anonymous and safe.

I stepped back instead of forward.

“Arden, come here, come sit,” she said, hand at my back, guiding me to the table.

My feet started moving forward of their own volition. I sat in the chair she’d pulled out. Yes, I was malleable and compliant. She took the phone from my hand, sliding it into her back pocket.

“Mom. I thought you were dead,” I said.

“Did you, now?”

“You sent me that box.”

She smiled sadly. “I thought you would look for me. I thought you would speak. But you just . . . put it in the closet, went on with your life. I thought you would recognize things, and, well.” She shook her head, half a smile. “You always did surprise me.”

“You changed your name,” I said.

“You’re not the only one who can start over.” Her hand ran down my hair. “You and I are survivors, baby girl.”

My head was fuzzy, but I didn’t think it was the medicine. It was her, and the echoes of the past—the way I couldn’t differentiate between then and now.

She walked over to the counter, pulled down a mug, like she had every right to be here.