Chapter 1 - THE RED DOOR IN ELI’S DRAWING
Eli Carter drew the same house every Thursday.
The roof was brown, the porch was white, and one upstairs door was always colored red. Beside it, a small figure wore a navy astronaut backpack.
Daniel assumed it was imagination until Eli’s teacher asked why the child wrote DON’T LET HER LOCK IT beneath the latest picture.
“Who locks the door?” Daniel asked that evening.
Eli stared at Hannah across the dinner table.
“Grandma says it keeps everybody safe.”
Hannah set down her fork. “Mom uses the old office when she needs quiet. Eli threw a fit because he wasn’t allowed inside.”
Eli shook his head, but no words came.
Daniel’s first wife, Claire, had vanished six years earlier after her car left a mountain road during a storm. Eli had been fourteen months old. Search crews found the car, blood, and Claire’s dark winter coat snagged near the river. They never recovered her body.
Hannah was Claire’s younger half-sister. She helped Daniel survive the grief, cared for Eli, and eventually became his wife. Her mother, Diane Walker, treated Eli as her only grandchild.
There was no reason for him to fear her house.
The following Thursday, Eli hid his astronaut backpack beneath his bed and begged not to visit Diane.
Daniel promised he could stay home. Hannah reminded him they had a medical appointment and no sitter.
That night, Daniel opened the backpack.
Inside was a photograph torn from an old family album. It showed Claire wearing a dark coat.
Across her face, Eli had drawn a black square.
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On the back, in careful seven-year-old handwriting, were five words:
She comes after Daddy leaves.
