The First Knock
The salt air of the coast was supposed to wash away the old, make everything feel new. It had, over the past three years, washed away the ugliness of the estate, the sound of doors being slammed and Enzo walking up and down the hallway. It had taken away the taste of the fear. It had,initsown way, been cleansing. Unfortunately, I was learning that peace was something that had to be protected. One wrong step could take it all away, and leave everything just as broken as before.
It began with the sound of the wind coming on the front porch.
At first, I thought it was the evening breeze coming through the French doors from the Atlantic. But this clink-clink had a rhythm to it, an irregular beat, that had nothing to do with the weather. I turned away from the kitchen counter, shaking the flour from my fingers into a dish towel, and walked toward the front door.
The last time he had seen Haze was in his studio at the back of the house, where the muffled sound of a pencil scratching against sketch paper could be heard down the hallway. He did not know I was unsettled. I wanted it to remain that way.
I pulled the curtain back just an inch.
Sitting on the step of the weathered wooden porch was a single, heavy object. Not a package. Not mail.
An old, analog photo, face down.
I can't breathe. The temperature in the room drops, or perhaps it's simply the sudden surge of ice that grips my veins. No, I had to leave that all behind, bury the remnants, and erase all traces of my past existence. Here, in the quiet of this quaint town, I became someone new.
I opened the front door with shaking hands and pushed it open. A cold evening air filled my lungs, and then I looked up and down the dirt road. There was nothing but the tall pines swaying in the bruised purple sky.
Slowly, I bent down and picked up the photograph.
My heart stopped. It wasn’t a picture from the past. It was taken from the treeline across our yard, framing me through the kitchen window just ten minutes ago, standing right where I had been wiping my hands. Stenciled in black ink across the bottom margin were three neat, chilling words:
Found you, little bird.
The door behind me groaned as it opened. "Elianna?" Haze's voice came from the doorway, carrying over the oppressive silence like a welcome sound. "Who was at the door?"
I clutched the photograph behind my back, my fingers digging into the glossy paper until it crumpled. The cage door hadn’t been left open after all. It had just been unlocked.
