《Rest, Honey》全部章節：第 51 章 - 第 53 章

Claire noticed things feel off almost immediately, but she said nothing yet. I watched her closely as the days passed, her sharp, intuitive eyes scanning every room with growing uncertainty. She would pause in the middle of unpacking a box, her hands stilling on a stack of books, and look around as if she felt someone standing right behind her. I made sure she did. I let my cold presence brush against her back when she was alone in the kitchen. She shivered and rubbed her arms, but she didn’t call out to Ryan. She just stood there for a long moment, breathing slowly, trying to convince herself it was nothing.Sophie was the center of my world now. The little girl reminded me so much of Lily that I couldn’t stay away. I followed her everywhere, letting my presence grow stronger around her. She saw me clearly. She talked to me when her parents weren’t looking. She drew pictures of us together and left them under her pillow. She told me secrets and laughed at my cold touch.“Diane, you’r

The old woman lived two houses down the lake road, in a small weathered cottage with a garden that had grown wild around the edges. I had watched her for years from the upstairs windows, a quiet figure who walked the shoreline every morning with a cane and a wide-brimmed hat. She never came close to my house. She always stopped at the edge of the property line and turned back, as if some invisible boundary kept her away. On the day she finally crossed that line, the air inside the walls felt different, heavier, like the house itself was listening.Sophie was playing in the front yard that afternoon, collecting smooth stones from the gravel path and lining them up in careful rows. Claire sat on the porch steps with a book she was not reading, her eyes following her daughter while her mind stayed somewhere else. Ryan was still at work. The lake lay quiet under a thin layer of afternoon haze. I hovered just inside the open front door, close enough to feel the warm air mixing with the col