“You don’t know that.”
“She sent me one message at 2:11.”
Grace sent a screenshot.
Melanie: “You were right. I found something. I need to think.”
Grace: “Where are you?”
Melanie: “Don’t call Lucas.”
Grace: “Mel, what did you find?”
Melanie: “Ask Anne about Laurel House.”
I stared at the final words.
Laurel House.
The name meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
And yet something about it stirred uneasily at the edge of memory, like a melody heard through a wall.
I typed, “What is Laurel House?”
Grace replied, “I was hoping you knew.”
I sat at the kitchen table.
The soup cooled in front of me.
I searched my email.
Laurel House.
Nothing.
I searched Lucas’s old messages on my phone.
Nothing.
I searched our shared cloud storage.
For several minutes, only unrelated documents appeared: insurance forms, travel itineraries, home repair receipts.
Then one result surfaced.
An image file.
