Chapter 4 - The First Door
Three months earlier, Ava had begun hearing noises after midnight.
Soft footsteps above her room.
A muffled cough.
Sometimes the scrape of furniture.
Wade told her the house settled at night.
Diane blamed squirrels in the attic.
But Ava knew the sound of someone walking.
One night, she followed it.
At the end of the upstairs hall stood a bedroom Wade said had been empty since childhood.
A new metal latch had been screwed to the outside.
Ava placed her ear against the wood.
Someone was breathing inside.
“Hello?” she whispered.
The breathing stopped.
Then a child’s voice said, “Go away.”
Ava ran to her mother’s room.
Wade answered the door.
Diane was asleep behind him.
“There’s someone locked upstairs.”
Wade smiled gently.
“You had a nightmare.”
“I heard him.”
“Him?”
Ava had revealed too much.
Wade crouched to her level.
His voice remained soft.
“Children who lie can create serious problems.”
“I’m not lying.”
He placed his hand around her wrist.
Not hard enough to bruise.
Hard enough to warn.
“You have a good home. Your mother is happy. Don’t ruin that.”
The following morning, the latch was gone.
The room stood open and empty.
Diane believed Wade.
Ava began photographing everything.
A dark mark on the hallway carpet.
A child-sized plate hidden beneath the laundry sink.
Medication bottles with the labels torn off.
Then, two weeks later, the latch appeared on a different upstairs bedroom.
That was the first door Franklin meant.
Ava found the removed latch in Wade’s locked workshop.
She took it and sealed it inside a plastic bag after Nathan once taught her never to handle evidence more than necessary.
She photographed the second door.
Then she waited.
On the wedding morning, she heard movement behind it again.
She slipped upstairs during the reception.
This time, the voice behind the door whispered a name.
“Tommy.”
Ava asked how old he was.
“Eight.”
She asked why he was locked in.
The answer came after a long silence.
“Because Wade says I make people ask questions.”
Ava photographed the bruises when Tommy pushed his wrist through the narrow gap beneath the door.
Then Wade appeared behind her.
He did not shout.
May you like
He smiled.
And that frightened her more.
