Page 15 of He Sees You

Only now I'm thirty-one, successful, and still feel like that teenager the moment I see Dad's silhouette in the doorway.

The Sterling family lodge looks exactly as I left it—cedar shakes weathered to that particular grey-brown that screams Adirondack practical, green metal roof already carrying a fresh load of snow.

The carved wooden sign Dad made when I was ten still hangs by the door:

Sterling Home - EST. 1993.

The year Mom left, he'd built that sign and acted like our family was just beginning instead of falling apart.

I grab my bags from the trunk, noting the unfamiliar sedan parked down the road.

Maybe Mrs. Hartz finally replaced that ancient Subaru.

But something about it feels wrong—too clean, too careful in its positioning.

Like it's trying to be unnoticed.

"Are you going to stand there all day, or are you coming in?"

Dad's voice carries across the yard, gruff with something that might be emotion or might be the cold.

He's wearing his uniform still, probably came straight from whatever scene had him ignoring my calls for the last hour.

Sheriff Sterling doesn't take time off, even for his only daughter's homecoming.

"Just admiring the complete lack of change," I call back, hauling my laptop bag over my shoulder. "Very on-brand for you."

He doesn't smile, but his eyes soften as I climb the porch steps.

Up close, he looks exhausted.

New lines around his eyes, grey in his stubble that wasn't there last Christmas.

He pulls me into a hug that smells like coffee and duty leather, and for a moment, I'm eight years old again, believing my dad can fix anything.

"You look tired, kid," he says into my hair.

"You look worse."

That gets a laugh, short and rough. "Come on. Coffee's fresh."

Inside, the house wraps around me like a time capsule.

Knotty pine walls that turn everything amber in the afternoon light.

The massive stone fireplace still dominated by that twelve-point buck he shot the year I was born.

Cast iron woodstove in the corner ticking as it cools.

The plaid couch where I wrote my first terrible poetry, convinced I was the next Sylvia Plath.

But there are new things too.

A security panel by the door, its LED light blinking green.

New deadbolts that weren't there before—Schlage, I note, the kind that costs three times what Dad usually spends.

Motion sensor lights visible through the kitchen window.