“Michael!” Tessa shouted. “Open this door right now. You’re having a breakdown.”
There it was.
The next script.
Grieving widower.
Traumatized husband.
Unstable man.
I shouted back, loud enough for the phone still connected to 911.
“My wife Caroline is alive. You locked her in the blue room. Police are coming.”
The rattling stopped.
Silence.
Then Grant’s voice.
Low.
Ugly.
“Open the door, Michael.”
“No.”
“You don’t understand what’s happening.”
“I understand enough.”
Something struck the door.
Ellie screamed.
I held her against me.
Sirens rose faintly in the distance.
Grant heard them too.
He swore.
Footsteps retreated.
Through the camera feed, I saw them running back toward the garage stairs.
No.
No.
I left Ellie inside the locked inner room with the phone still connected to 911.
“Stay here. Do not open for anyone except a deputy.”
“Daddy!”
“I’ll be right back.”
I hated myself for leaving her.
But Caroline had waited three years.
Four minutes had become one.
And the people who buried her once were trying to do it again.
I ran into the rain barefoot, across the gravel, toward the garage staircase.
Pain shot through my feet. Cold water soaked my shirt. Tessa turned when she saw me and rushed down the steps.
“Michael, listen to me!”
I did not slow.
She grabbed my arm.
I shook her off so hard she stumbled.
Not because I wanted to hurt her.
Because there was no version of the world where I allowed her hand to guide me again.
Grant appeared at the top landing carrying a black medical bag.
Behind him, Dr. Lyle had the blue room door open.
Light spilled out.
And in that light, I saw her.
Caroline.
She was sitting in a chair near the bed, wrists thin, hair cut shorter than I remembered and streaked with gray at the temples. Her face was pale, hollowed by illness or drugs or both. But it was her.
My wife.
Alive.
Her eyes found mine.
“Mick,” she whispered.
I hit Grant like a man who had spent three years burying his own heart and just found it breathing.
We went down hard on the landing.
The medical bag spilled open. Syringes, vials, gauze, restraints.
Dr. Lyle shouted.
Tessa screamed my name.
