Another foster placement that splits us up? Another cousin who says yes for two weeks and then changes their mind?”
Elena’s silence answered for her.
Pike pushed three old brass keys across the desk.
“There is one matter I should mention,” he said.
Ava’s fingers paused above the keys.
“What matter?”
“The house has a reputation. Deputies were called several times after your father disappeared. Neighbors reported break-ins, lights, sounds from inside the walls.”
Ben’s face went pale.
“What kind of sounds?”
Pike folded his hands. The silver ring glinted.
“Old houses make strange noises,” he said. “People hear what grief teaches them to hear.”
Ava took the keys anyway.
The largest one felt heavy in her palm. For a moment, she remembered her father kneeling in front of her when she was nine years old, rain dripping off his hair, his face drawn tight with fear he had tried to hide.
“If anything ever happens,” Mason had whispered, “you take your brother and you run.”
Ava had buried that memory so deeply she had almost convinced herself it was a dream.
But as the key warmed in her hand, the memory returned with teeth.
They drove to Briar Road that afternoon.
Elena drove them in the county sedan, the windshield wipers fighting the rain as Blackthorn faded behind them. The old mining town sat low in the valley, surrounded by hills that looked black under the storm clouds. Closed shops lined Main Street. A rusted coal tipple stood near the river like the skeleton of something too large to bury.
The Carter house waited three miles past the last gas station.
Ava remembered the lane before she saw the mailbox. She remembered the way the road dipped near the creek, the old walnut tree beyond the fence, the curve of the porch where her father had once promised to fix the swing.
The house looked smaller and larger at the same time.
Smaller because life had made Ava harder to impress.
Larger because fear changes the size of things.
The farmhouse crouched in weeds, two stories of peeling white paint and faded blue shutters. The porch sagged. One upstairs window was cracked. Brown grass choked the yard, and thorn bushes pressed against the foundation as though trying to climb inside.
Ben whispered, “It looks haunted.”
Ava wanted to tell him there were no such things as haunted houses.
Instead, she looked at the front door and said, “It has a roof.”
That was what hope had been reduced to.
A roof.
Elena insisted on checking the inside before leaving them there. Ava let her, though every step across the porch made the rotten boards complain.
The front door opened with a groan.
The smell came first.
Dust. Damp wood. Mildew. And underneath it, something metallic and stale, like old pennies held too long in a closed fist.
Sheets covered the furniture in the front room. The wallpaper peeled away in curled strips. The air was cold enough that Ben pulled his sleeves over his hands.
Elena checked the kitchen, the back door, the stairs, and the bedrooms. The electricity was off. The water did not work. A raccoon had nested in one upstairs closet, but it was empty now.
“I do not like leaving you here,” Elena said.
Ava
