Chapter 3 - Evelyn Vance
Richard told me not to answer the voice.
I did anyway.
“Who’s down there?”
Silence.
Then:
“Please…”
A woman.
Not a child.
Weak.
Hoarse.
Richard grabbed the chain.
“We’re leaving.”
I stared at him.
“Are you insane?”
“Maya, get Lily.”
“She’s already with me.”
“Then get in the car.”
“No.”
His composure cracked.
“DO WHAT I SAID.”
Lily began crying again.
I moved away from him.
That changed everything.
Richard could control me when we were alone.
But there was something about holding Lily that made the fear feel secondary.
I looked him directly in the eye.
“You touch me again, and I scream until every neighbor on this street comes running.”
His mouth closed.
I pointed at the lock.
“Open it.”
“No.”
“Then I will.”
“You don’t have the key.”
He was right.
But the small decorative table beside the cake held a drawer with scissors, candles, and serving tools.
I took the heavy metal cake knife.
Not useful against the lock.
But Richard looked afraid anyway.
Then the woman below whispered:
“Evelyn.”
I froze.
“What?”
“My name…”
The pink shoe slipped from my fingers.
E.V.
Evelyn Vance.
Richard’s sister.
Supposedly dead for twenty-two years.
I turned toward him.
“She’s alive?”
His face was colorless.
“Not exactly.”
I stared.
“What does that mean?”
He sat down on the edge of the patio chair as if his legs had failed.
“My father said she was dead.”
“Your father lied.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know?”
He looked at the cellar.
“Not until three years ago.”
My stomach dropped.
Three years.
We had been living here for five.
Meaning two years after moving into this house, Richard learned his supposedly dead sister was alive.
And somehow she ended up beneath our backyard.
“How long has she been down there?”
He said nothing.
I stepped closer.
“How long?”
“Six days.”
The world seemed to tilt.
“You locked your sister in a cellar for six days?”
“No!”
He stood.
“I didn’t put her there.”
“Who did?”
His eyes went to the house again.
That repeated glance.
Someone else.
Not imagined.
Not abstract.
Someone Richard expected.
“Who?”
“My mother.”
Helen.
Of course.
The woman who once erased a little girl from a photograph and convinced me I had imagined her.
I almost laughed from disbelief.
“Your mother put her own daughter in there?”
Richard rubbed both hands over his face.
“She came back.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“She appeared at Mom’s house last week. She said she had proof about Dad.”
“What proof?”
He shook his head.
Then the woman below struck the door again.
“Richard…”
Her next words were clearer.
“Don’t let Helen take the baby.”
I looked at Lily.
Everything inside me went cold.
May you like
Richard closed his eyes.
And I realized he had known this part too.
