I moved past Jesse without another word and went straight for the back door. It was locked, just as Clara always kept it. My hand hovered over the handle for a second before I forced myself to turn it. The moment the door opened, the sound grew clearer—not louder exactly, but closer, like whatever was inside had been waiting for someone to finally listen.

“Stay here,” I told Jesse, though my voice barely sounded like mine anymore. He nodded, frozen near the mower. I stepped inside the kitchen and immediately felt it—the wrongness Clara used to describe when she was anxious. Curtains drawn tight. Air too still. A faint trace of something recently disturbed, like someone had moved through the house but tried not to leave a sign.

The crying came again, this time unmistakably from upstairs. I took the steps two at a time, my pulse hammering in my ears. Clara’s bedroom door was slightly open. I pushed it gently—and everything inside me stopped. A small bag was on the bed. Not packed for travel. Packed in panic. And beside it, the sound I’d been hearing finally made sense.

It wasn’t coming from inside the house. It was coming from the wall vent. A child’s voice, weak but real. I dropped to my knees and pulled the vent cover loose just as Jesse came running in behind me. And there, hidden in the narrow space between drywall and insulation, was the truth Clara had been too afraid to say out loud—someone had been watching her house from inside it long before that lawn mower ever started