Chapter 214: It’s Mommy’s
The house didn’t feel abandoned.
That was the wrong thing. That was what stopped her in the doorway.
Arianne stepped inside. The air wasn’t stale. It smelled clean. Wiped down. She forced her hand off the doorframe.
Four months. It shouldn’t have felt like this.
Lily didn’t hesitate. She slipped past Arianne like she’d been here yesterday. Her hand caught Leo’s wrist. Pulled him forward.
"Come on." Already halfway to the hallway. "Let’s check."
Leo followed. Steps quick. Familiar.
The sound of them carried through the house.
Arianne stood in the entry and listened to it. Their footsteps on the floors where they used to live. Lily’s voice rising somewhere down the hall—she’d found something she hadn’t expected. Leo’s tablet chiming. The sounds of two children moving through a space that knew them.
This was where they had learned to walk. Where they had eaten breakfast and watched rain on the window and fallen asleep on the couch while Alex and Layla watched something on television too loud. This was the house where everything had been ordinary before it wasn’t.
And now they were back in it, running from room to room like no time had passed, and Arianne was standing in the entry unable to take the next step.
Something moved in her chest and she pressed it down before it could become anything.
Franz closed the door. He didn’t move right away.
She felt him before he spoke—the way he went more present when something cost her something.
"Take a minute," he said.
"I’m fine."
"I know." His voice didn’t argue. "Take one anyway."
Arianne almost said again that she was fine. She stopped herself. She’d been saying that in various forms for months—she was fine, she was managing, she had it—and Franz had learned to hear through it and she had learned that he could, and telling him she was fine when she was standing in her dead best friend’s entry with his children running through the house behind her was something she was tired of doing.
She took the minute. Stood there. Let the sounds of the house reach her without managing them.
Then she turned.
"You’ve been here before," she said.
Franz nodded. "Once. Two months ago. To make sure it was secure."
Her eyes moved across the living room. The couch in the same place. A stack of magazines aligned too precisely for something untouched. The curtains adjusted, more light than before.
"They’ve been maintaining it."
"Regularly," Franz said. "I had it arranged. No one touches anything beyond cleaning."
She looked at him. "You did this."
"I did what needed to be done."
From the hallway: "Leo, it’s here! It’s here!"—Lily’s voice, closer and louder. Arianne’s jaw tightened. She moved.
Alex’s study was at the end of the hallway. The door looked the same. Closed.
Arianne stopped in front of the panel. Her fingers found the code Franz had given her before they left. She didn’t pause. The lock clicked. She pushed the door open.
The room held exactly as it had been four months ago.
Desk aligned. Papers stacked precisely. Shelves filled but not crowded. Nothing out of place.
She stopped in the doorway.
The small dish on the corner of the desk. Loose change. His pens. She’d given him that dish at the housewarming. He’d laughed and said it was too nice to use and she’d told him to stop being precious about it and he’d kept it anyway and now there it was, exactly where it had always been, and she was standing in the doorway of his study with his son and daughter running around behind her and he was months gone.
Franz’s hand came to the back of her shoulder. He didn’t say anything.
She felt it register—the weight of his hand, the steadiness of it. He wasn’t pushing her in. He wasn’t telling her it was fine or that it had been four months and she could do this. He was just there, behind her shoulder, not asking her to be anywhere other than where she was.
She walked in.
"I left it as it was," he said. "After we came here last time, I didn’t allow anyone to go through it."
Arianne moved to the desk. Her hand pressed against the surface. Cold.
She moved through the desk fast. Folders. Receipts. Coffee shops. Gas stations. She separated stacks, checked dates, moved through it.
Franz worked the shelves. Files. Books. Paper moving.
She already knew before he said it. She’d known when she walked in and saw how ordered everything was. Alex was careful. Alex wouldn’t leave the real things here.
"There’s nothing here."
She looked up. Franz was near the shelf, a file open in his hand.
"If he documented anything," he said, "it wouldn’t be here. Not the things that mattered."
"Then where?"
"Somewhere he knew you’d look. Eventually."
Her eyes moved to the notebook on the desk. Alex’s handwriting on the cover. She picked it up. Turned it once in her hands.
Not here. Not in this room with his pens in the dish and four months of absence in the air and the twins running through his house calling to each other. She’d open it somewhere she could actually hold what was in it without the house looking at her.
She tucked it under her arm.
Footsteps. Fast.
"Aunt Aria!"
Lily appeared in the doorway. Breath uneven. Leo just behind her. She was holding something in both hands.
A tablet.
"We found this." Lily stepped inside. Her face was flushed. "It’s Mommy’s."
Arianne’s stomach dropped.
Leo moved closer. Pointed at the tablet. Typed quickly. Turned the screen toward Franz.
no battery
Franz took it from Lily. His hands were steady. He turned it. Checked the casing. The wear along the corners.
"It was in Mommy’s drawer," Lily said. "The one by the bed." Her voice was lower now. "Leo remembered."
Leo nodded. His grip on his own tablet was tight.
Franz looked at Arianne. Not long. Just long enough.
"Can you charge it?" Lily stepped closer. "We want to see what’s inside."
"It might take time," Franz said.
"That’s okay." Too bright. "We can wait."
Leo’s knuckles had gone white around his own tablet.
Arianne crouched. She looked at Lily first, then Leo.
"Lily." She kept her voice even. "Where exactly did you find it?"
"Mommy’s drawer. The small one by the bed. Leo said she used to charge it there."
Arianne looked at Leo. He nodded once.
"Okay," she said. She stood.
"We’re going to find something, right?" Lily’s voice was smaller now. "Aunt Aria?"
"I don’t know," she said. "But we’re going to try."
Lily’s eyes were bright. She didn’t cry. She nodded.
Leo typed. Held up his tablet.
okay
Lily grabbed Leo’s hand. "Come on. We didn’t check everything yet."
Leo typed as he moved. why
"Because we didn’t."
They disappeared into the hallway.
Arianne was alone with Franz. With the study. With the notebook under her arm.
She looked at the desk. At the dish with the loose change and the pens.
"Both of them," she said.
Franz stood beside her. "Both of them."
She turned toward the door. He fell into step beside her—the tablet in his hands, the notebook under her arm. The study held its shape behind them.
She stopped in the doorway. Looked back once.
Alex’s desk. His chair. The dish on the corner.
She turned away.
Down the hallway. Through the house where Lily and Leo had lived their whole lives before they hadn’t. She could hear them in one of the bedrooms, Leo’s tablet chiming, Lily’s voice giving instructions about something they were checking that they hadn’t checked yet.
Arianne’s grip tightened on the notebook.
Alex’s handwriting on the cover. Layla’s tablet in Franz’s hands. Two people who had been going somewhere every few weeks for a year, who had come back better every time, who had told no one.
Their children were in the next room.
Leo’s tablet chimed. Then Lily’s voice, lower than before: "Leo. Come look at this."
Arianne stopped in the hallway.
The closed door to what had been Alex and Layla’s room. She looked at it. Long enough to feel the weight of knowing that somewhere in there, in a small drawer by the bed, Layla had kept her tablet. Had gone somewhere every few weeks, had come back better, had put the tablet back in the drawer and said nothing.
She pressed the notebook harder against her side. The spine of it against her ribs.
Then she kept walking.