Noah had never sounded like that before. He stood in the kitchen doorway with his backpack still on one shoulder, watching his father work under the sink, and said there was something he needed to know about his mother.
For ten years, Claire’s disappearance had lived in the house like a locked room nobody could enter. She had vanished during a family day at the beach, leaving behind six children, a fiancé, and a trail of questions that never seemed to lead anywhere.
That afternoon, Noah brought out an old envelope he had found in his grandmother’s attic. It had been tucked inside one of Claire’s sewing boxes, hidden away long enough for the paper to fade.
Across the front was Ethan’s name, written in Claire’s handwriting.