Chapter 6: The Quiet House
The gravel driveway crunched beneath the tires of my sedan as I pulled up to the house, killing the engine before the headlights had even fully dimmed. For the first time in two years, the place felt entirely ours. There was no hum of caterers prepping for a dinner party, no hurried footsteps of hired help scurrying across the hardwood floors, and no nervous tension humming beneath the surface of every conversation. Emily stirred in the back seat, blinking sleepily against the dashboard lights. I unbuckled my seatbelt, stepped out into the cool evening air, and walked around to open her door. She looked up at me with those wide, clear eyes, her small hand reaching out instinctively to wrap her fingers around my thumb.
"Daddy, are we staying here tonight?" she asked softly, her voice barely audible over the crickets in the lawn.
"We're staying right here, sweetheart," I replied, lifting her out of the car and carrying her up the front steps. "No one is going anywhere."
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Inside, the house smelled faintly of lemon polish and old books—the scents that had been buried under the expensive floral arrangements Rebecca insisted on buying. I carried Emily upstairs to her room, helping her untie the delicate laces of her flower girl dress and folding it neatly over the back of a chair. She changed into her favorite cotton pajamas with the small blue stars, and I sat on the edge of her mattress, reading three chapters of her favorite storybook until her breathing slowed and deepened into steady sleep.
Downstairs, the silence of the house pressed against my eardrums. I walked into the kitchen and poured a glass of tap water, leaning against the marble counter. The security monitor by the back pantry glowed with muted green light, showing the empty front gates where Rebecca’s luggage had been left. I needed to move fast before her lawyers started calling. My phone sat silent on the island, but I knew that peace wouldn't last through the morning. I pulled out my laptop, opened a clean encrypted folder, and began downloading the complete property logs from the smart home system, searching for every record of who had entered the nursery over the past six months.
