“Do you want to meet my mom?” she repeated carefully. “She liked hide-and-seek too.”
For one terrifying second, my brain stopped working properly.
“Grace,” I said slowly, “what do you mean?”
She frowned like the answer should have been obvious.
“Do you want to see where she lives?”
Emily wandered into the kitchen hugging her stuffed rabbit.
“Mommy is downstairs,” she said casually.
A cold wave rolled through me instantly.
The locked basement.
The secrecy.
Daniel never opening it around me.
Every horrible possibility crashed into my mind at once.
Grace grabbed my hand and began pulling me toward the hallway.
“At the basement,” she said. “Come on.”
I should have waited for Daniel.
I know that now.
Instead, panic mixed with curiosity in the worst possible way.
I knelt at the lock with two shaking hairpins from my bun while the girls watched beside me.
Then the lock clicked.
Grace bounced excitedly.
“See?”
I opened the door.
The smell hit first.
Not death.
Not decay.
Just dampness. Old air. Mildew.
I slowly walked down the stairs while my heartbeat thundered in my ears.
Then the room came into view.
And suddenly my fear changed into something else entirely.
It was not a hidden prison.
It was a shrine.
An old couch sat against the wall with a folded blanket draped over one arm. Shelves held framed photographs, candles, DVDs, children’s drawings, and labeled memory boxes. A cardigan hung over a chair. Women’s rain boots rested neatly beside the wall.
A little tea set sat on a child-sized table as though someone might still come back and use it.
Grace smiled proudly.
“This is where Mom lives.”
I stared at her.
“What do you mean, sweetheart?”
She pointed toward the television.
“Daddy brings us down here so we can be with her.”
Emily hugged her rabbit tighter.
“We watch Mommy on TV.”
Grace nodded. “Daddy talks to her too. Sometimes he cries, but he says that’s okay because she already knows.”
I looked around the room again.
Not something criminal.
Something sadder.
Daniel had turned his grief into a physical place.
And somehow the girls had learned to believe their mother still existed inside it.
I walked toward a small notebook lying open on the table.
One sentence caught my eye before I quickly closed it.
I wish you were here for this.
Then the front door upstairs slammed shut.
Daniel was home.
“Girls?” he called.
Grace lit up immediately.
“Daddy! I showed her Mommy!”
The silence that followed was instant and heavy.
Then fast footsteps.
Daniel appeared at the basement entrance and went completely pale when he saw the open door.
For one awful second, nobody moved.
Then he looked at me.
“What did you do?”
His tone made Grace physically flinch.
I stepped slightly in front of the girls.
“Do not speak to me like that.”
Immediately the anger drained from his face, leaving behind something far worse.
Shame.
