She headed for the stairs, but I stepped forward. “I’ll get it. Where is it?”
Something flickered in her eyes. A micro-expression of calculation. “Red leather. On the shelf by the window.”
I retrieved the portfolio, handed it over, and watched her leave again, apologizing once more to Gary as she breezed out. From the kitchen window, I watched her Audi disappear down Ashford Lane.
Gary resumed mowing, the engine roaring back to life. I should have gone upstairs to pack for Seattle. Instead, I went back downstairs.
The studio looked the same, but I saw it differently now. The soap smell was recent. The water glass was still sweating. Cassandra hadn’t worked late last night; I had heard her come home at six and stay upstairs. I would have heard her return downstairs. The fifth step always creaked.
I knocked on the back wall again. Thud. Hollow.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Cassandra.
Thanks for covering, Dad. Love you.
Covering.
I typed back: Love you too.
But as I stood there holding that cold glass of water, Gary’s words echoed in my head. A woman crying. Trying not to be heard.
I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to believe my daughter. But something in her voice didn’t match the brightness of her smile. And that glass of water was telling a different story entirely.
Sleep didn’t come that night. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling of the bedroom I had shared with Margaret for eighteen years before she passed. The digital clock on the nightstand glowed in the darkness. 11:47 PM. Then midnight. Then 1:15 AM.
Outside, the wind rustled through the oak trees lining Ashford Lane—a sound that usually lulled me to sleep after long flights across time zones. Tonight, it only made the house feel more alive. More watchful.
The silence pressed down like a physical weight. Too thick. Too deliberate. As if the house itself was holding its breath.
At 2:15 AM, I heard it.
A soft creak from downstairs. The kind of sound old houses make when someone moves carefully, trying desperately not to be heard.
My hand reached for the lamp, then stopped halfway.
If someone was down there… if Cassandra was down there… I didn’t want to alert her.
I should have gone to investigate. I should have crept down those sixteen steps and seen for myself what was happening in the basement at two in the morning. But I didn’t.
Instead, I lay there in the dark, listening to the thud of my own heartbeat, wondering when I had become the kind of father who was afraid to confront his own daughter.
Margaret would have known what to do. The thought came unbidden, the way thoughts of her still did after ten years. She had been the strong one. The one who could read people the way I read instrument panels—instinctively, accurately.
When Felicia was sixteen and snuck out to a party, Margaret had been waiting in the kitchen, tea in hand, when she climbed back through her bedroom window at 2:00 AM.
“Take care of our girls, Chris,” Margaret had said in those final weeks, her hand trembling in mine, her voice already fading. “They need you. Promise me.”
I had promised. God, how I had promised.
But had I kept that promise? Or had I just existed alongside them, too wrapped up in flight schedules, grocery lists, and the mechanics of keeping a household running to notice what was really happening under my own roof?
Margaret would have seen through whatever was going on in that basement. She would have looked Cassandra in the eye and known immediately whether her daughter was telling the truth.
I had never possessed that gift. I trusted instruments, data, facts that could be verified. But how do you verify the truth when the only witness is your own gut, and your gut is telling you something you desperately don’t want to believe?
The memories came flooding back. Eight years ago. March 15th.
Felicia had been nineteen—brilliant, creative, alive with possibility. She had just landed a freelance contract with a design firm in New York, an opportunity that could have launched her career far beyond Minneapolis.
I remembered the night she disappeared. Tuesday evening, just after dinner. She had been on her phone, texting someone, a small smile playing at her lips as she headed out.
“Dad,” she had called from the hallway. “Meeting Sophie for coffee.”
Sophie Morgan, her best friend from community college. It had sounded perfectly normal.
“Drive safe,” I had said, barely looking up from my paperwork. “Don’t stay out too late. You’ve got that meeting tomorrow.”
“I won’t. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Those were the last words I ever said to her.
The next morning, her car was gone. Her bed was untouched, the duvet still smooth from the morning make-up. When I called her phone, it went straight to voicemail.
I called Sophie first. She hadn’t seen Felicia. Hadn’t made plans. Hadn’t received a single message.
By noon, I was sitting in a police precinct filing a missing person report, my hand shaking so badly I could barely hold the pen.
By evening, the police confirmed there had been no bank activity. Her phone’s last ping placed her on Oakwood Avenue, a desolate stretch of road near the old industrial park. But by the time officers arrived to sweep the area, there was nothing there. Just asphalt and silence.
Cassandra had been devastated. Or, at least, she had appeared to be. She helped print thousands of flyers, posted tirelessly on social media forums, and cold-called everyone in Felicia’s contacts list. For weeks, she seemed indefatigable, a sister on a crusade.
“Maybe she just needed space,” Cassandra had said one night, about a month later, her voice thick with exhaustion. “You know how Felicia was? Impulsive. Artistic. Maybe she took the job early and didn’t want the tearful goodbye.”
I wanted to believe that. So, like a coward, I did.
But lying there now in the dark, eight years later, the small things resurfaced. Details I had dismissed as the paranoia of a grieving father began to stack up like bricks in a wall.
Three years ago, I woke around 2:00 AM and heard shuffling from the basement. Maybe voices. Too faint to be sure. The next morning, when I asked Cassandra, she didn’t miss a beat.
“That was me,” she’d said easily, pouring orange juice. “New polishing equipment. I’m trying to keep the vibration dampeners on, but it’s tricky.” It made sense.