65

Louis’s POV

We stayed in the safe room until the sun came up. The screens showed nothing. No ghosts. Just our empty, quiet house.

Katie woke up confused. “Why are we in the TV room?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

“Just a little adventure,” I said, my voice sounding fake and cheerful.

“A boring adventure,” she said, and she was right.

Sierra and I looked at each other. We couldn’t live in this little room. We had to go out. We had to be normal. Or try.

We opened the door. The house felt different. It smelled like our home—cleaners and flowers and coffee—but it felt like a stranger’s place. Every shadow looked wrong.

We made breakfast. We acted normal for Katie. Pancakes. Syrup. Cartoons on the kitchen TV. But my eyes kept checking the doors. The windows. Sierra jumped every time the toaster popped.

After breakfast, Sierra took Katie upstairs for a bath. I went to my office. I had to do something. I couldn’t just wait.

I looked at the black notebook again. The old notes about me. *The watch. The coffee. The gate.*

It was someone who knew me from a long time ago. But who? I made a list in my head. Old business partners. Old enemies. Old… friends. The list wasn’t very long.

Then I looked at the newer notes. The ones about our schedule. About Sierra. He called her “S.” in the notes. Not “Mrs. Crowe.” Just “S.” It felt personal. Wrong.

A new thought hit me, cold and awful. What if it wasn’t about me? Not really. What if it was about *her*? What if someone from *my* past had been watching *her* all this time? And now he wanted to take her away?

The idea made me want to smash something.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number. Again.

**Check the garden. Under the big rose bush. A gift for you.**

I didn’t tell Sierra. I just stood up and walked to the back doors. I could see the big rose bush from here. It had pink flowers.

I went outside. The morning air was cool. I walked to the bush and knelt down. The dirt underneath was soft. I dug my fingers in.

I felt plastic. I pulled it out.

It was a little toy. A small, plastic soldier. The kind I played with when I was a kid. It was dirty and old.

Taped to it was a tiny piece of paper. The writing was small and neat.

*Do you remember this? You left it at the lake house. I kept it. I keep everything.*

The lake house. My family’s old summer house. We sold it ten years ago. I hadn’t thought about it in forever.

I dropped the soldier like it was on fire. My heart was pounding. The lake house. Who was at the lake house with me?

Friends. Other rich kids. My cousin, Peter. Some kids from town we hired to do chores.

One of those kids. A boy. He was quiet. He liked to watch us play. His name… his name was… Leo? Leon? Something like that. He helped in the garden. His mom worked for us one summer.

I ran back inside. Up to my office. I called my mother.

She answered on the second ring. “Louis? Is everything alright?”

“Mom. The old lake house. The summer we had the garden boy. The quiet one. What was his name?”

She was silent for a moment. “Goodness, Louis. That was twenty-five years ago. Why?”

“Please, Mom. It’s important.”

She sighed. “Let me think… His mother was Margaret. She did the cooking. The boy… he was odd. Followed you around. I think his name was… Lyle. Lyle something. Butcher? Baker? Something like that.”

“Lyle,” I repeated. The name felt wrong in my mouth. “What happened to him?”

“I have no idea. His mother only worked that one season. We let her go. She was stealing silverware, I think. They left. Why on earth does this matter?”

Because he kept my toy soldier. Because he knows about my watch. Because he’s in my house.

“No reason,” I said. “Thanks, Mom.”

I hung up.

Lyle. I tried to picture him. A skinny kid with hair that needed a cut. He was always lurking. I was nice to him, I think. I gave him my old comic books once. But mostly, I ignored him. He was just the help’s kid.

Could it be him? After all this time? It seemed crazy.

But then I remembered something else. Something bad. One afternoon, some of the other kids were teasing him. Calling him names. Pushing him around. I saw it. I was the older kid. The rich kid. I could have stopped it.

I didn’t.

I just walked away.

My stomach hurt. Was this all because I didn’t stop some bullies twenty-five years ago?

Sierra walked into my office. She saw my face. “What’s wrong?”

I showed her the dirty soldier. I told her about Lyle.

She listened, her face getting paler. “So… this is about you being mean to a kid when you were a kid?”

“I wasn’t mean,” I said, but it sounded weak. “I just didn’t help.”

“And that made him like this? A stalker? A kidnapper?” She shook her head. “Louis, that’s… that’s not enough. There has to be more.”

She was right. It didn’t make sense. Unless… unless something else happened. Something I didn’t know about.

“I need to find him,” I said. “I need to find Lyle.”

“How?”

“My mother said his last name might be Butcher or Baker. I have people who can look. It’s a start.”

I made the calls. I told my security team to find anyone named Lyle Butcher or Lyle Baker who would be about my age. Who had a mother named Margaret. Who lived near our old lake house.

It felt like looking for a needle in a haystack. But it was all I had.

The rest of the day was long and tense. We were like zombies, moving around the house, jumping at every sound.

That night, after Katie was asleep, Sierra and I were in our bedroom. We were both too wired to sleep. We just sat on the bed, not talking.

The fear and the tiredness and the closeness from the safe room were all mixed up together. We were sitting close. Our legs were touching.

I looked at her. She looked so tired. And so beautiful.

“I’m scared,” she whispered. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at her hands.

“I know,” I said. “Me too.”

“I’m scared we’ll never be normal again. I’m scared Katie will always be looking over her shoulder.”

“We’ll fix it,” I said. But it sounded like a lie.

She finally looked at me. Her eyes were big and dark. “Make me forget,” she said. Her voice was so quiet. “Just for a minute. Make me forget all of it.”

I knew what she meant. It wasn’t about love. It was about being alive. About feeling something that wasn’t fear.

I reached out and touched her face. Her skin was soft. She leaned into my hand and closed her eyes.

Then she kissed me.

It wasn’t slow or sad this time. It was hungry. And desperate. Like we were trying to swallow the whole scary world and turn it into something else.

We fell back on the bed. Clothes came off. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t gentle. It was two people who were scared and angry and clinging to each other in the dark.

It was loud. And fast. And real.

After, we lay there in the dark, breathing hard. The fear was still there, waiting outside the door. But for a little while, we had told it to shut up.

Sierra turned her head on the pillow. In the moonlight from the window, I could see her looking at me.

“That was different,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good different,” she said. And she put her hand on my chest, right over my heart.

We fell asleep like that. Together. While the ghost watched from somewhere. And while my people looked for a boy named Lyle who never forgot a summer at the lake.