I was not retreating to my childhood home to weep. I was marching toward the lock that matched this silver key. But as I stepped into the cool autumn night, a chilling realization washed over me: whatever Margaret had hidden away was potent enough to warrant her dying breath, and I was entirely unprepared for the monster it was about to unleash.
A nondescript motel near the train station served as my war room. The neon vacancy sign flickered violently outside the window, casting harsh red shadows across the stained, cigarette-burned carpet. It was past eleven at night—the exact hour I usually woke to rotate Margaret in her medical bed to prevent pressure sores. The sheer silence of the room was deafening, pressing against my eardrums like a physical weight.
I unzipped my suitcase and retrieved a battered tablet, a device Mark and I used to share before he upgraded to newer models. The moment it connected to the motel’s unstable Wi-Fi, a barrage of synced email notifications flooded the lock screen. Mark, possessing the technological prowess of a stone, had never unlinked his primary alert email from this device.
