They were on the floor below—soft, deliberate steps, like someone walking through the very rooms we had just explored.
I slipped from the bed, heart hammering. I grabbed my phone; the battery was down to 12%, and in my haste to escape New York, I realized I’d forgotten to bring a charger.
I tiptoed to the bedroom door and eased it open. The hallway stretched in both directions, swallowed by darkness that my phone’s weak light could barely penetrate. Another creak echoed from somewhere below.
This was my house now. Whatever was down there, whoever was down there, I had a right to know.
I moved down the hallway slowly, then descended the grand staircase, each step groaning under my weight despite my best efforts at silence. The entrance hall opened before me, painted silver by the moonlight now streaming through the tall windows where the storm clouds had broken.
Nothing moved. But there, in the beam of my flashlight, I saw something that made my blood freeze.
Fresh footprints in the dust. They were larger than mine or Sophie’s, leading from the front door directly toward the library.
“Hello?” My voice came out smaller than I intended, instantly swallowed by the enormous space.
No answer. Just the low howl of the wind outside.
I followed the prints to the library. The door stood ajar, though I was certain we had closed it earlier. Inside, the smell of old leather and aged paper filled my nostrils. And there, impossibly, on the small table beside a wingback chair, lay an open leather-bound journal.
I approached slowly, every instinct screaming at me to run back upstairs. The journal was filled with Evelyn’s handwriting, the same elegant script from the letter. The open page was dated just five months ago.
“I know my time is short,” she had written. “The doctors give me weeks, maybe days, but I have no regrets. This house has been my sanctuary against a world that tried to break me, and now it will be hers.”
“Sarah doesn’t know it yet, but she is stronger than anyone in that poisonous family ever gave her credit for. She will find this journal when she is ready. She will find everything when she is ready.”
Tears blurred my vision. Here was irrefutable proof that I had been thought of, planned for, and chosen deliberately by someone who understood.
A whisper seemed to drift through the room, so faint I almost missed it.
Welcome home.
I spun around, heart hammering against my ribs. “Who’s there?”
Only silence answered, heavy and expectant. I backed toward the door, clutching my phone like a weapon, and ran back upstairs. I locked our bedroom door, shoved a heavy chair under the handle, and lay awake until dawn, listening to every creak and groan the old house made.
Morning light transformed everything. The mansion, which had seemed haunting in the darkness, became magical in the daylight. Sophie and I explored with renewed wonder, discovering room after room of treasures.
In Evelyn’s bedroom, behind a heavy full-length mirror, Sophie found a gap that suggested a hidden mechanism.
“Mommy, look,” she said, pressing her small hands against the edge of the mirror frame.
With a soft click, the mirror swung inward, revealing a narrow, dusty passage. We followed it upward, using the last dregs of my phone battery for light, until it opened into the most beautiful room I had ever seen.
It was an artist’s studio, flooded with natural light from massive skylights overhead. Canvases lined the walls, showcasing paintings in various stages of completion. There were still lifes, sweeping landscapes, and portraits, all rendered with a skill that spoke of decades of devoted practice.
In the center of the room, resting on a large easel, stood an unfinished painting of the mansion itself. It was captured in its summer glory, with flowers blooming and sunshine turning the stone golden. But it was the figure in one of the upper windows that made me gasp aloud.
A woman holding a child’s hand. Both were painted with such precise, loving detail that there could be no mistake. The woman looked exactly like me. The child looked exactly like Sophie.
“She painted us,” I whispered, staring at the canvas, chills running down my arms. “But how? She died before we ever came here.”
On a small table nearby, I found sketchbooks documenting years of work. On the last page of one, there was a note in Evelyn’s careful script.
“For Sarah, when you find this place. This house gave me freedom. I hope it gives you the same. Look for the numbers where dreams were sworn.”
We spent the afternoon searching. We found a set of stairs leading to the third floor, hidden behind what looked like a linen closet. They led to the servants’ quarters from the mansion’s grander days. Most of the rooms held only storage, but at the very end of the hall, behind a reinforced door that resisted until I put my full weight against it, we discovered something extraordinary…
