She didn't sleep that night.
She lay on her back, eyes wide, the ceiling above her dissolving into shifting shadows. Every creak of the building made her body tense, every passing car sent her heartbeat racing.
Her mind circled the note again and again. He knows.
Who?
What?
There were too many answers, and none of them safe.
By dawn, she dragged herself from bed, her body heavy with exhaustion, her thoughts frayed. She made tea but didn't drink it. She left the mug untouched on the counter, steam curling into the air like a ghost.
At work, her hands shook as she filed papers, the noise of the office muffled and distant. Her coworkers barely glanced her way. They never did. To them, she was background — the quiet woman in the corner, pale and forgettable. Safe in her invisibility.
But now, someone had noticed her. Someone who knew.
That night, she forced herself to open the locked box at the back of her closet. She hadn't touched it in years. The metal was cold under her hands, dust clinging to its surface. The key trembled as she slid it into the lock, the click echoing far too loudly in the silence of her apartment.
Inside, everything smelled faintly of old paper and iron.
There were photographs. Newspaper clippings. A child's drawing, edges frayed. She stared at the drawing the longest — two figures holding hands, a sun scrawled above them. A shaky name scribbled in the corner: Daniel.
Her stomach lurched. She pressed the paper against her chest, squeezing her eyes shut. She hadn't let herself think of him in years. Not since—
No. She couldn't go there.
She shoved the drawing back into the box and reached for one of the newspaper clippings. The headline glared up at her in bold black letters:
LOCAL GIRL SURVIVES HOUSE FIRE — BROTHER PRESUMED DEAD
Her hands went numb. She dropped the clipping as if it burned her.
The memory ripped through her before she could stop it: flames licking at the walls, smoke choking her lungs, the sound of wood splintering. A boy's voice, screaming her name.
Her name. Her fault.
She pressed her hands over her ears, but the echoes of that night roared back, louder and louder until she couldn't breathe.
Her phone buzzed on the table, jolting her back into the present. She snatched it up with trembling hands, desperate for distraction.
One new message. Unknown number.
She opened it.
"You can't hide forever, Claire."
The phone slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor.