Chapter 2 - The Shadows on Birchgate Lane
That night, the house was too quiet.
Corinne had screamed, threatened, and wept, but she knew me well enough by the set of my jaw to realize that arguing was useless. She had packed two suitcases, dragged a sullen, unprotesting Desmond out to her sedan, and driven off into the rainy Thistlewood Hollow night.
I had made Wren a grilled cheese sandwich and scrambled eggs, sitting beside her at the table until every last crumb was gone. She ate slowly at first, like she was afraid someone would snatch the plate away, but by the time she finished, she leaned her head against my shoulder and fell fast asleep right there in the dining room chair.
I carried her upstairs, tucked her into her lavender sheets, and sat in the rocking chair in the corner of her room until the grandfather clock downstairs struck midnight.
My mind was a chaotic storm of memories, re-examining the past year through a terrifying new lens.
Corinne had always insisted on managing the household schedule. “You work so hard on the job sites, Julian, let me handle the domestic side,” she used to say with a sweet smile. She was the one who packed Wren’s lunches. She was the one who insisted Wren stay home in the afternoons while Desmond went to after-school tutoring.
“She’s high-strung, Julian. She needs discipline. She throws tantrums when you're not around,” Corinne had told me repeatedly during our monthly sit-downs over coffee.
I had believed her. I was a grieving widower who had lost my first wife, Martha, to a sudden illness when Wren was barely a year old. I had trusted Corinne to bring a mother's touch into our home.
Instead, she had brought a regime.
Around 1:00 AM, I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. The house was cold. I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in months.
"Hello?" a sleepy, gravelly voice answered on the third ring.
"Arthur? It’s Julian."
"Julian? Do you know what time it is, man? It's the middle of the night."
"Arthur, I need a favor. You're still doing private security systems and home automation audits over in the county, right?"
There was a pause on the line as sleep rapidly cleared from my friend's voice. "Yeah. Commercial and high-end residential. Why? Did someone break into your place?"
"No," I said, staring at the deadbolt on the pantry door. "I need you to pull the footage from a smart doorbell and internal home monitor system. Specifically, the last six months of logs from Birchgate Lane."
"You want me to hack your own house?"
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"I want you to tell me how long that lock on my pantry has been active," I said, my knuckles whitening around the phone. "And I want to see every single file Corinne deleted from the cloud server."
Arthur was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, all the sleepiness was gone. "I'll be at your driveway in twenty minutes. Make coffee."
