Page 102 of The Girl from Widow Hills
I shook my head, to concentrate. To keep the past from rising up and overlapping with the present.
I read her employment history, but there was only one place listed before here, a few years earlier: in Ohio.
A wave of intense nausea washed over me—a darkness, settling in my limbs, before everything went numb.
My hand shook as I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my call log. I moved back in time to more than a week ago, to before the box arrived. The only number that didn’t have a contact attached. That out-of-the-blue call that had caught me off guard, like whiplash:Is this Arden Maynor, daughter of Laurel Maynor? Ms. Maynor, I’m afraid we have some bad news—
Every nerve was firing as I called that number back now.
When that man had called, I hadn’t asked for specifics, too caught by the shock of the moment. I had accepted what he said at face value: that they had taken care of everything, and all that was left were her possessions. It was part of my past, and I’d wanted to keep it there. There was nothing I could do about it now. I couldn’t get off that call fast enough.
I held my breath one second, two, as the number processed. It was late; I expected the call to go to an answering service, but I needed to hear who it belonged to.
It rang once, and then I heard it: a muffled echo.
I put the phone down. Dropped it to my side. Listened, my nerves on fire, my heart in overdrive, as another phone rang, in echo—from somewhere down the hall.
I stumbled to the end of the hall, into my bedroom, looking for the source. Another ring—in the closet, on a shelf. In that box.
The phone that I’d ignored—the old flip phone, useless, presumably dead.
Someone had turned it on. The screen was lit up and ringing.
I sank to the floor, feeling four walls closing in and not caring, not caring at all. I opened the phone, checked the outgoing call log. The only thing that existed, not deleted, were calls, one right after the other, on the night of Sean Coleman’s death.
Like someone had stood just outside this closet, with the window open, watching me there. Watching me and wanting me to wake—or wanting someone to find me there with the body. Calling the number until I heard it. Until I woke.
Not Nathan Coleman but a woman. A woman with long brown hair, disproportionate to her small frame, and a too-wide smile—standing there, like I’d summoned her.
The moment I had feared for years.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting on the floor when I heard the footsteps.
A flurry of movement under my bedroom window.
I stood, silently walking through my bedroom, to listen but not be heard. There was movement coming from outside the house, but there were barely any lights on inside. I couldn’t be seen.
And then: the creak of a wooden step out back.
I remembered waiting on Rick’s couch, waiting for the police. The time stretching and contracting when he told me:It takes so long for help to get here.
911 DISPATCH CALL CENTER TO CENTRAL VALLEY POLICE DEPARTMENT
DATE: AUGUST 28, 2020
TIME STAMP: 9:21 P.M.
911 DISPATCHER:We’ve got a report of a home invasion happening at 23 Old Heart Lane. Unidentified female. The call disconnected and we can’t make contact again.
POLICE DISPATCH:Copy. Is caller still inside?
911:Yes, single female inside the house. She said she was trapped.
PD:Sending units to 23 Old Heart Lane. Any further information?
911:That’s all we got before the line went dead.
