Page 32 of The House That Held Her

31

I stand motionless, my gaze locked on the chest. For so long, I’ve needed to see these skulls—to prove I’m not unraveling and to silence the echo of that humiliating encounter with the police who dismissed me like some delusional, hysterical woman. Yet now that I’m here, the chest only radiates dread. My mind reels with the possibility of finding Nate among its grisly contents. I wonder if I’d even recognize him.

What makes a face recognizable once it’s stripped of muscle and skin—when it’s reduced to a raw, bare skull? I can’t stop imagining the macabre difference between old bones, yellowed and brittle, and those newly stripped, the surface still smooth and pale. The thought of some killer meticulously scraping and cleaning flesh sets my stomach roiling, but it stays fixed in my mind all the same, refusing to leave.

Before I can stop myself, I’m on my knees, the chest looming over me. It summons me forward with cruel inevitability, my legs moving as if directed by someone else’s will. And then I take them in: sixteen skulls, each one old and discolored, and a seventeenth that’s fresh enough to be unmistakably new . I don’t need a closer look to know. My heart cracks, and I crumple, my forehead hitting the edge of the chest as tears spill hot and fast. A sick part of me was waiting for proof, but now that I have it, none of it matters. Nate is gone.

I sit there, staring blindly at those hollow sockets, letting numbness wash through me. Everything I’ve worked toward, everything I cared about—destroyed. I should stand up, but my body sags under the weight of loss. At last, with agonizing slowness, I haul myself upright and swipe the back of my hand across my damp cheeks, fighting for breath. I yank out my phone and take picture after picture with trembling fingers, capturing every angle of these gruesome remains until my phone finally dies. But now, at least, I have evidence—something real to bring forward.

But as I flip through the images, a hollow truth punches into me: I no longer care about the house, about making a fresh start, or about the redemption I once hoped for. All I want is to go home—to Maryland. I close my eyes, conjuring the smell of Old Bay on freshly steamed crabs, the vivid reds and oranges of fall, the muted crunch of snow underfoot in winter. That’s my home, my safe haven. Not this. Not a place of death and betrayal, where I’ve lost everything.

I open my eyes, voice cracking in the dim, suffocating passageway. “I’m sorry, Nate,” I whisper, tears coming again. “This was all my idea—this house, this move. I thought I could fix…everything after Lila. Fix us. Fix me. But I was wrong. So wrong.”

A vivid ache hits me at the memory of Lila’s tiny face, that old regret flaring up like a bruise I can’t help pressing. I’d convinced myself this house would bring closure, that it would forgive me for not saving Lila. Instead, I dragged Nate here with me, and now he’s gone, another causality in my attempt to have the picture-perfect white picket fence life.

A cold emptiness settles over me. I turn from the chest, fueled by determination rather than panic. I start retracing my steps through the maze of passageways, using the peepholes as my map. One shows me the guestroom, so I pivot east. Another looks out on the living room, where Shannon and I sat hours ago working out how to open this cursed passageway. My stomach clenches at the thought of Shannon– if she came in here, she’s likely just as lost as I am.

At last, I emerge in the first hidden room, the one with the drafting desk and unmade bed. Relief floods me—I’m finally close to escaping. I have my proof, and now I just need to find Shannon and get this phone to the police.

But as I stoop through the entrance, something catches my eye—a shape on the dresser near the bed. My heart jumps into my throat. Reaching for my phone, I remember too late that its battery is dead. The only illumination is the flicker of the old lamp and the sliver of weak light from a peephole.

I move closer, adrenaline spiking. My fingers curl around the object, and I drag it into the trembling lamplight. It’s a Yankees baseball cap, frayed along the edges with a cracked brim. My hands shake worse as I turn it over, tears blurring my sight, until I make out a single word scrawled in fading ink on the inside:

“Bambino.”