The Shape Beneath

He hadn’t meant for her to find the door.

Theo stood at the edge of the hidden garden, rain threading down the back of his neck. The collar of his coat was soaked, but he hadn’t noticed the chill until now. His breath fogged faintly in the air, and the silence around him felt deeper here, heavier.

She was inside.

He’d felt it the moment she crossed the threshold. The atmosphere shifted, the way it used to when he opened a draft and saw her name written across a page he hadn’t meant to write. Something responded to Sloane. It always had.

And now the garden was answering her.

The door hadn’t opened for him in years.

He hadn’t tried, not since the last time…after the fire, after the screams in the hall and the pages that bled ink without cause. He had shut the gate, nailed it shut himself in a storm, and walked away.

But nothing in this place stayed buried.

He stepped farther in, boots sinking slightly in the overgrown moss. The fountain stood in the center, just as he remembered, still holding that shallow pool of water. Not quite stagnant. Not quite still. He hated looking at it. It always looked back.

Theo ran a hand through his hair, slicking it away from his face. His fingers trembled slightly. He told himself it was the cold.

His coat—an old black wool duster—hung heavy with rain. Underneath, he wore a faded grey button-down, the collar slightly frayed, the sleeves damp where the cuffs peeked from his coat. The top button was undone. His dark trousers clung where the fabric had soaked through near the hem. He looked like a man who had stepped out of time, dressed for another era. And he hadn’t shaved in days.

She was standing near the fountain, back to him. She hadn’t heard him approach. Or maybe she had and simply didn’t turn.

He watched her for a breath too long.

The way her shoulders rose and fell. The way her cardigan hung open in the damp, darkened at the sleeves. The way her head tilted slightly, as if she were listening to something just beneath the wind.

He stepped into the clearing.

“I told you not to come here,” he said quietly.

She turned, her expression unreadable. Her eyes were darker in the garden’s light, that strange mix of stormcloud and shadow. Her mouth parted slightly, as if a question had been sitting there and then vanished.

“You never told me about the door,” she said.

“I didn’t have to.” His voice came out rougher than intended. “You weren’t supposed to see it.”

“What is this place?”

He hesitated. The lies were easier. He had told himself a hundred different versions of the truth over the years. That it was just a garden. Just a remnant of someone else’s grief. Just another part of the house that should be forgotten.

But she had seen it now.

She had walked the path. Heard the laughter.

And it had seen her.

“Come back to the house, Sloane.”

She didn’t move. She looked past him, toward the trees.

“Why did you write the letter now?” she asked.

He looked away. The words came slower this time. “Because I knew the moment you read it, the house would change.”

“It already has.”

He met her gaze.

“No,” he said. “This is just the beginning.”

There was silence for a while. Not awkward. Not painful. Just full of all the things neither of them could say aloud.

Theo turned and walked back the way he’d come. She didn’t follow right away, but eventually he heard the soft tread of her boots behind him.

Back in the house, he poured himself a whiskey and stared into the fire.

He remembered the first time he’d brought her here. She’d been twenty-one. Sharp. Unafraid. She’d taken one look at the estate and called it a mausoleum. Then she’d stayed up half the night in the attic with a typewriter, laughing like the house didn’t scare her at all.

He used to think he’d brought her here because she reminded him of the version of himself he’d buried.

Now he wondered if he’d brought her here because the house had wanted her.

He sipped the whiskey. It didn’t help.

There were things he still hadn’t told her. Not about the door, not about Rhys, not about what he had found in the east wing that night, the room that didn’t appear on any blueprint, filled with children’s drawings that hadn’t been touched by dust.

And the name carved again and again into the floorboards.

Sloane’s.

He hadn’t told her that, either.

And some names didn’t belong in this house twice.