I hired a man to mow my lawn on a quiet Tuesday morning while my daughter was already gone for work. Less than an hour later, my phone rang and he whispered, “Sir, I don’t want to alarm you, but is there anyone else living in this house?”
My hand went numb around the coffee mug.
“What do you mean?” I asked, even as dread crept up my spine.
“There’s crying,” he said softly. “From your basement.
And it doesn’t sound like a TV.”
That was the moment I realized my home was hiding something I was never meant to find.
When I went down to check the basement myself, I was shocked to uncover a secret that changed everything.
Tuesday mornings were supposed to be quiet. After thirty-two years of flying commercial jets—Minneapolis to Seattle, Seattle to Denver, Denver back home—I’d learned to treasure the stillness between rotations.
The calm before I zipped my uniform back into its garment bag and headed to the airport for another three-day stretch across the country.
I stood in the kitchen of the house on Ashford Lane, the two-story colonial Margaret and I had bought twenty-three years ago when Cassandra was nine and Felicia was four. Back when the girls’ laughter echoed through these rooms and Margaret hummed softly while watering her herbs by the back window.
That life belonged to another time.
Margaret had been gone for ten years.
Felicia had vanished eight years ago, disappearing one March night at nineteen and leaving behind nothing but unanswered questions and a hollow ache that never truly healed.
Now it was just me and Cassandra. My eldest daughter, thirty-two, brilliant and driven, who had transformed the basement into a jewelry studio and built a business that would have made her mother proud. She’d left for her downtown gallery at seven that morning, same as every Tuesday, kissing my cheek and reminding me to take my vitamins.
The house felt too big for two people, but it was still home.
I poured a second cup of coffee—dark roast from the place on Hennepin Avenue—and checked the clock above the stove.
7:34.
My Seattle flight wasn’t until mid-afternoon. Plenty of time to pack, review weather reports, maybe call Steven about our golf game on Friday.
Then my phone rang.
Gary Thompson’s name lit up the screen.
Gary had mowed our lawn every Tuesday for six years, steady as clockwork, and never called unless something was wrong.
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