Chapter 3

I burst out of the church like a maniac, sprinting down the road in my heavy wedding gown.

"Chloe! Stop!"

Liam’s car pulled up fast behind me. He slammed on the brakes, leapt out of the driver's seat, and practically yanked me into his arms.

"Let me go! I have to go find them!" I pounded frantically at his chest. "I'm such a piece of shit! They're dying, and I spent the whole time fighting with them over a damn ring!"

"Hey, look at me! Calm down!" Liam gripped my arms, pinning them down. His eyes were intensely resolute. "We'll go find them together! Mom and Dad are my parents too, and I'm not letting you face this alone."

His words carried a strange gravity that made me stop struggling almost instantly.

I stared at Liam—a man who had been humiliated by my parents four times, whose wedding had been ruined four times—yet right now, there wasn't a single ounce of resentment in his voice.

"Liam, you don't understand..." I shook my head in despair. "They might have lost their minds. Terminal illness does that to people. If I stay with you, they'll do something even worse. I can't drag you down with me."

"I'm not going anywhere." Liam cupped my face, speaking with deliberate, absolute certainty. "Chloe, listen to me carefully. I don't care if they've lost their minds, or if they're hiding some unspeakable secret. I only care about you."

"You need to stay calm." He took a deep breath, gently wiping away my tears with his thumbs. "Think about it carefully. When exactly did they start acting this bizarrely?"

Liam's prompting pulled me back from the edge of panic.

He was right. It was way too bizarre.

Even if a terminal diagnosis warped someone's mind, why would they have such a sick, obsessive fixation specifically on wedding rings?

Throwing it in the river, smashing it with a hammer, flushing it down the toilet, and now dropping it in acid... This wasn't just random sabotage. This felt like highly calculated destruction.

Something suddenly clicked in my head.

"Let's go. Get in the car." I grabbed Liam's wrist and pulled him toward the passenger side.

"Where are we going?" he asked, stumbling a little as I yanked him forward.

"Back to my childhood home," I said through gritted teeth. "If they're really hiding a secret, it’s going to be there."

Several hours later, under the cover of darkness, we pulled up to the old Victorian house in the suburbs of Boston.

The house was pitch black; Mom and Dad clearly hadn't been back in a long time.

Relying on muscle memory, I led Liam around to the corner of the porch, shoved a dead potted bare ivy aside, and fished out a rusted spare key from underneath.

The second I pushed the front door open, a heavy wave of medicinal chemicals mixed with the musty stench of a house cut off from sunlight hit us in the face.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Liam asked, keeping his voice low as he pushed the door shut behind us.

I didn't answer. I headed straight up to the second floor, walking directly to the room at the far end of the hall—the one that had been padlocked for ten years. Noah's bedroom.

Ever since Noah died in the crash, Mom and Dad had installed three heavy deadbolts on the door and strictly forbidden anyone from entering.

Liam found a rusted, heavy-duty crowbar in the downstairs utility closet and violently smashed through the locks.

With a heavy thud, the door swung open.

Liam instinctively flicked the light switch on the wall. The old bulb overhead flickered weakly a couple of times before popping with a sharp crack, plunging the room back into dead silence.

He immediately pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight. But as the cold beam swept across the room, Liam froze in his tracks.

"Chloe, are you absolutely sure no one was allowed in here, and that it's been locked for ten years?"

"Positive. They put those three padlocks on the very day after Noah's funeral." I stepped forward, but the moment I saw what was in front of me, I gasped.

The flashlight's halo hit the hardwood floor. There was no decade-old mold, no dead spiders. Instead, it was spotless. The floor was so clean it actually reflected the light.

"Then none of this makes any sense." Liam slowly panned the beam upward, finally resting it dead center on the desk. "Look at that."

Following his light, I saw it: sitting right in the middle of the desk was a heavy-duty, black LED camping lantern with a handle.

Liam walked over and reached out, pressing the switch on the base of the lantern.

With a sharp click, the lantern emitted a blindingly harsh white light, instantly illuminating half the room.

"The battery is fully charged. There isn't even a speck of dust on the handle." Liam turned around, looking at me with a grim expression.

This didn't look like a dead child's memorial room that had been sealed off for a decade.

Had someone been sneaking in here?

Under the lantern's cold, sterile glow, I finally took in the entirety of the walls.

Three walls of the room were absolutely plastered with photographs, newspaper clippings, and bizarre symbols. Countless strands of dark red yarn crisscrossed and intersected between the pictures, resembling the murder board of a deeply deranged FBI investigator.

"Oh my god..." I clamped both hands over my mouth to stifle a scream.

Liam picked up the lantern and walked over to the wall, holding the light close to the dense clusters of photos and clippings.

"Chloe, you need to see this." His voice carried a rare, subtle tremor.

Forcing down the chills creeping up my spine, I stepped closer. My eyes locked onto the photos illuminated in the center of the light ring.

I tried to find whatever abnormality in these images had driven Mom and Dad so insane. But at first glance, everything looked perfectly happy. They were candid shots from the day of Noah's prom. In the pictures, he was standing on the lawn in a sharp suit, flashing a brilliant, wide smile.

Just as my frayed nerves began to ease a fraction, Liam suddenly reached out and pulled aside a piece of red yarn covering the edge of a photo.

"No. Noah isn't the focal point," Liam said, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Look at these sections circled in red pen."

"It’s completely pitch black. What's even there?" I frowned, leaning in closer to get a better look.

Following his finger, I strained my eyes, focusing on an incredibly inconspicuous, shadowed patch of bushes in the background of the image.

A split second later, the blood in my veins ran ice cold.

"What... what is that..." I stammered, my voice shaking.

Hidden in the absolute deepest part of the shadows, was a pair of eyes.

Like a venomous snake lurking in the dark, they were staring dead at Noah in the center of the frame.

I stumbled backward in sheer terror, slamming hard into Liam's chest.

And as my peripheral vision swept over the dozen other photos taken at different times, in completely different locations, a much deeper, suffocating dread closed its grip around my throat—

In the corner of every single photo circled in red ink.

Without exception, nestled in the shadows, was that exact same pair of eyes.