Chapter 1 - THE VOICE UNDER THE FLOOR
Emily Carter was already on her knees when Margaret entered the living room.
A loose floorboard had split near the old rug.
Emily gripped a small hammer with both hands and struck the same place again.
“Help! Somebody help!”
Margaret stopped.
Her face changed instantly.
“What are you doing?”
Emily hit the board again.
“I heard her!”
Margaret crossed the room, grabbed the back of Emily’s yellow sweater, and yanked her away.
“No!”
Emily twisted and reached for the hammer.
Margaret knocked her arm aside and struck her once across the guarded upper arm and shoulder.
Emily stumbled backward onto the rug.
The front door burst open.
Ethan Carter stepped inside carrying a grocery bag.
It dropped from his hand.
“Emily!”
He ran past Margaret and fell to his knees beside his daughter.
“What did you do to her?!”
Margaret backed away.
Emily opened her eyes.
“Dad…”
Ethan slid an arm behind her shoulders.
“I’m here.”
Emily pointed toward the floor.
“It’s under there.”
Ethan looked.
A faint sound came through the cracked boards.
Not plumbing.
Not an animal.
A voice.
Weak.
“Emily…”
Ethan froze.
The room disappeared around him.
He knew that voice.
Four years could not erase it.
He carefully set Emily against the wall and grabbed the hammer.
Margaret whispered:
“Ethan, stop.”
He turned.
“What did you hide down there?”
“Nothing.”
He struck the floor.
Wood split.
“Ethan!”
Again.
Then he threw the hammer aside and tore loose boards away with both hands.
Beneath the floor was not bare earth.
It was an old storm-cellar opening.
Metal bars crossed part of the darkness.
A woman gripped them.
Pale blouse.
Dark pants.
Thin face.
Hair longer than he remembered.
Ethan stopped breathing.
“Claire?”
She raised her head.
His wife.
The woman police had searched for.
The woman he had buried without a body in every way except legally.
Claire reached one trembling hand through the bars.
“Ethan…”
Margaret whispered behind him:
“You don’t understand.”
May you like
Ethan looked back at his mother.
For the first time in thirty-eight years, he was afraid of her.
