VEILBOUND

Katie sat cross-legged on her bed, scrolling absentmindedly through her phone when it buzzed with an incoming call. The number was unfamiliar. She hesitated, her thumb hovering over the screen. Normally, she would have let it go to voicemail, but something about the timing — late evening, with rain tapping insistently against her window — made her press accept.

“Hello?” she said, her voice cautious.

“Katie, it’s me.”

A voice, soft yet trembling, came through the line. It was her stepmother. Katie’s heart sank.

“Linda? What’s going on?”

There was a pause, and then the words came: “It’s your father... He’s gone.”

They hit her like a blow to the chest. She sat in stunned silence, her breath catching in her throat.

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“He passed away this morning,” Linda said, her voice breaking. “It was sudden — a heart attack. I’m so sorry, Katie.”

Katie could not find the words to reply.

The phone slipped from her hand and landed on the bed beside her. The world around her seemed to blur, and her mind spun back to the family home tucked away in that secluded area — the place where her life had once been so tightly bound to her father’s.

She pictured the towering trees surrounding the house, and how sunlight used to filter through the windows of her childhood room. Memories flooded in: her mother’s laugh echoing through the halls before her untimely death, when Katie was just thirteen.

Then came the lonely years that followed — the sharp absence of her mother, and the comfort she found in her older sister, Casey. But even that faded when Casey left shortly after their mother’s burial to attend college, only visiting home occasionally.

Linda had entered their lives not long after, a calming presence in a sea of grief. Katie and Casey welcomed her at first, finding solace in how gently she cared for their father. But as time passed, the man Katie had known as loving and devoted grew distant and stern.

By the time she turned eighteen, she had left the family home to build a life in the city, returning only during summers. Her ties to her father loosened more with every passing year. Yet Casey had always been her anchor — a constant amid the shifting tides of their fractured family. Now, that part of her world was gone.

“Katie? Are you still there?” Linda’s voice pulled her back to the present.

“I’m here,” Katie whispered, her voice cracking. “I... I don’t know what to say.”

“I understand,” Linda said softly. “I’ll have to call Casey too. I just thought you should hear it from me first.”

Katie nodded, even though Linda could not see her. “Thank you... for letting me know.”

When she ended the call, Katie sat motionless, grief pressing heavy on her chest. Her father was gone, and with him went a piece of her past that she had never fully made peace with. All she could think of was the house — its quiet halls, the memories etched into every corner. She knew now she would have to go back, to face the life she had left behind and the ghost of the man her father had become.

Katie gripped the steering wheel as her car pulled away from the city lights, the hum of traffic fading into the quiet embrace of the countryside. The road stretched ahead, cloaked in shadows cast by towering trees. Their dark silhouettes leaned in as if whispering secrets to one another in the stillness of the night. Her headlights carved a narrow path through the gloom, the beams glinting off damp patches of asphalt.

The familiar scent of pine and wet earth seeped into the car. This road, leading to their secluded home deep in the woods, was as much a part of her childhood as the old bridge that lay ahead. Her chest tightened at the thought of returning — not with laughter and warmth, but alone. The house felt like an echo of the life they had once shared, now emptied of joy.

As Katie neared the bridge, a wave of nostalgia washed over her. Below, the wide river glimmered faintly under moonlight. She slowed instinctively, craning her neck to catch the view of water cascading over hidden rocks. Memories surfaced: a younger version of herself pressing small fingers against the car window, wondering just how deep the river ran. Back then, it had seemed endless — a mystery that both thrilled and frightened her.

The steady hum of tires on the bridge’s surface felt hypnotic. Lost in the shimmer of the water and the weight of her thoughts, she did not notice the faint glow of headlights rounding the curve from the opposite direction.

The impact came like a thunderclap. Katie’s world erupted into chaos as the collision threw her hard against her seatbelt. The car spun violently, the force lifting it off the ground. For a heartbeat it felt weightless, like a leaf caught in a sudden gust, before it flipped.

The crunch of metal and shatter of glass filled her ears. Her vision blurred, catching flashes of an upside-down sky as fragments of her life tumbled along with the wreckage. She could not even scream. When the car finally crashed to earth with a deafening thud, everything went silent.

Katie’s body went limp, her head resting against the deflated airbag while blood trickled down her temple. The world around her dissolved into darkness as her consciousness slipped away — leaving only the cold, rushing sound of the river below to fill the void.