The heavy iron key in my father’s hand didn’t look like it belonged to any door in this century. It was long, black, and pitted with rust, its bow shaped like a distorted, triple-looped knot. He didn’t point it at me like a weapon, but the way his fingers clamped around the metal told me everything I needed to know. He was ready to use his weight to push past me. He was ready to lock something away again.
Inside the wall, the screaming stopped as abruptly as it had begun. It wasn’t the fading, trailing cry of someone running away down a tunnel; it was the sudden, choked-off silence of a hand clapping over a mouth.
"Rachel," my father said, his voice dropping into that terrifyingly calm tone he used whenever he was about to settle a family dispute by force. "Give me the vent cover. Step back into the kitchen with your mother."
"You were in Florida," Mark whispered beside me. His phone was still halfway to his ear, the screen bright and blank. He hadn’t dialed 911 yet. His thumb hovered over the glass, trembling so violently he couldn’t press the numbers. "You sent us postcards from Sanibel Island yesterday. How are you here?"
"We drove through the night," my mother said. She hadn’t let go of her purse. Her knuckles weren't just white; the skin looked stretched to the point of tearing over the bone. "We knew you’d come to clear out the house. We knew you’d look behind the bookcase. We told your father we should have burned this place to the ground the day Mother’s heart stopped, but he wanted to save the mahogany."