Chapter 5 - THE FLOORBOARD CREAK ON THE SECOND FLOOR
Adrian slowly reached his hand toward the silver key held in Emma's palm, but his fingers stopped an inch away, hovering in the air as if touching it would burn him.
"Where did she get this?" Adrian asked, his voice shaking uncontrollably. "Emma... tell me. Where did your mother get this key?"
Emma looked up at him, her dark eyes innocent and clear. "From her wooden box. She looks at it when she thinks I’m sleeping."
Adrian’s breath hitched in his chest. His mind raced through seven years of agonizing nightmares—the police reports, the closed-casket funeral, the millions he had poured into private investigators who found nothing, the empty mansion he had abandoned because her memory haunted every corridor.
Before Emma could say anything more, a sudden, soft sound broke the quiet atmosphere of the house.
CREAK.
High above them, on the second-floor landing, a heavy oak floorboard shifted under the weight of a quiet, deliberate step.
Both Adrian and Emma instantly raised their heads, looking up toward the top of the dark wood staircase that curved upward from the foyer.
A woman’s voice—soft, melodious, and carrying a familiar, breathtaking cadence—called down through the quiet air of the second-floor hallway:
May you like
"Emma? Is that you, sweetheart?"
Adrian stopped breathing entirely. The blood thundered in his ears like a crashing wave. It was a voice he had heard in his dreams every single night for seven years—a voice he thought was buried six feet under the cold earth of a Boston cemetery.
