The mahogany desk is cool beneath Helen’s palms, smelling of lemon oil and Daniel’s expensive scotch. It takes three tries with the bent paperclip before the lock on the bottom drawer gives way with a metallic click. She pulls it open, expecting tax returns or firm memos, but finds only a small hardcover volume tucked behind a stack of legal pads. The lavender silk cover is unmistakable.
It is Maeve’s diary, the one her daughter claimed she lost at school three months ago. Helen opens it to the middle, her eyes scanning the familiar, loopy script of a thirteen-year-old girl. The early entries are mundane—complaints about algebra and a boy named Leo. But as she flips past page sixteen, the handwriting remains Maeve’s while the vocabulary shifts into something clinical and cold. The sentences are precise, documenting Helen’s own work schedule and the family’s evening routines with the detached observation of a predator.
A floorboard groans in the hallway, cutting through the silence of the empty house. Helen freezes, the lavender book heavy in her hands, her heart hammering against her ribs.
The heavy brass handle of the study door begins to turn.
