Chapter 3 - The Family Estate
I left the hospital under the cover of a suffocating twilight. The desert heat was a dry, heavy weight, but it was nothing compared to the dread pooling in my gut. I knew where I had to go: the old Victorian house on the edge of the foothills, a place I had spent twenty years trying to forget.
The driveway was overgrown, the gravel crunching loudly under the tires of my rental. The house stood like a sentinel, its windows dark and inscrutable. I stepped out, the silence of the desert pressing in on me, loud and absolute.
I didn't knock. I used the hidden key under the loose stone by the porch—a secret my mother thought was still hers alone. The door groaned on its hinges.
"Mother?" I called out, my voice echoing in the grand, high-ceilinged hallway.
There was no answer, but the scent of lavender and rot hit me simultaneously. I followed the smell toward the back of the house. Through the French doors, I saw her. My mother, Sarah, was sitting in the middle of her sprawling, manicured garden. She was wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat, meticulously clipping the heads off perfectly healthy roses.
I marched toward her, my shadow stretching long and grotesque across the grass. "Where is he, Mother? Why is he in that hospital?"
She didn't look up. Snip. Snip. "The roses need space to grow, Emily. If you leave them too crowded, they choke each other out. Like families, I suppose."
"I am not playing your games," I shouted, grabbing the shears from her hand. They were sharp, heavy. She looked up then, her eyes devoid of warmth.
"You’re angry. You always were so loud, even as a child. Why can’t you be more like Brittany?"
"Where is Brittany?" I demanded.
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She gestured toward the house with a gloved hand. "She’s upstairs. She’s been... reflective. She saw what happened to Ethan, you know. She saw the 'accident.'"
I ran back into the house, tearing up the stairs. The door to the attic was locked from the outside. I slammed my shoulder against it until the old wood splintered. Inside, the room was sweltering. Brittany was huddled in the corner, her knees drawn to her chest. She looked up, and I saw the terror in her eyes—a mirror of my own. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She was shaking, pointing at a small, locked cabinet on the wall.
