The next morning, the map was gone, the room was locked again.
But someone had left a note under my pillow.
Handwritten. Delicate cursive.
You've seen it no, it sees you too.
Stay inside the lines, little flower, or you'll get picked.
No signature.
That same day, I noticed something odd about the houses across the street.
They never changed.
I didn't go back to Isla's room, not the next night, not the one after that.
Something about those drawings—it wasn't the likeness.
It was the way I was always alone in them.
Like whoever was sketching me knew I was already leaving people behind.
Or being left.
The Marrows didn't change; Regina still poured tea like it was a ceremony.
Dorian still read the newspaper like it contained war strategies.
And Grant... Grant just watched me.
I caught him one afternoon standing at the base of the stairs, head tilted, like he was trying to figure out what kind of animal I was.
"Do you remember your first day here?" he asked, smiling.
I said yes, he nodded.
"No one else ever gets past the gate."
Then walked away, the attic began to breathe.
I don't mean creak or groan.
I mean I could hear it—at night, when everything else had gone still.
Inhale. Exhale.
Walls tightening, floorboards loosening, like the house was expanding to make room for something else.
For me.
Or for what I was becoming.
The locked nursery door, the one with "Lydia" stitched on the crib, remained shut.
But now I saw shadows under it, slender feet pacing.
Tiny, flickering hands pressed to the gap, i told myself it was memory.
That trauma leaks like gas—colorless, odorless, and always ready to spark.
But I knew better.
I started forgetting things, small things, at first.
My birthday, the sound of my real father's voice.
The taste of Reen Green's blood in the air.
Then bigger.
Like how I got the scar on my knee.
Or whether Mom had ever really hugged me.
I wrote what I could in a notebook.
Names, dates, and facts I wasn't willing to lose.
The next morning, the pages were blank.
I confronted Isla.
"What is this place?"
She didn't blink.
Didn't look surprised.
Instead, she asked:
"Do you remember the day you killed her?"
My stomach tightened.
"I stabbed her." She stepped closer.
"But did she die, Mclainvic? Or did she give you something?"
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't know, that night, I dreamed of a garden that stretched forever.
Every flower was a face, every root a throat.
And they all whispered the same word over and over.
"Remember."
Then the house started rearranging itself.
Doors that led to bathrooms now opened into stairwells.
Hallways extended too long.
The mirror in the second-floor bathroom began to reflect last week's version of me.
Once, I turned a corner and came face-to-face with myself.
Not in glass, not in a dream.
Standing.
Breathing.
Eyes wide.
Then gone.
Dorian caught me trembling outside the study.
He handed me a glass of something warm, dark.
"You're adjusting. That's good."
"She'll be proud of you."
He didn't say who, he didn't have to.
When I asked him what this place was, he only smiled.
"Do you think WhiteHorse was the beginning?"
I didn't.
But now I wasn't sure it had ended, either.
The next morning, Grant was gone.
No mention.
No empty seat at the table.
Just a new rule posted on the refrigerator in cold block letters:
DO NOT SPEAK OF WHAT IS NOT HERE!
I stared at it for a long time.
Then took my notebook, and wrote just one line before the ink began to fade:
I don't know who I am anymore.
The notebook closed itself.
I swear it did.
That night, someone knocked on the inside of the nursery door.
Three times.
Same lights on, same curtains, same people walking by the window.
Until I knocked on the door of Number 7.
No answer, so I peeked through the mail slot, and inside?
Nothing, no furniture, no sound, just white walls and… mirrors.
Every surface a mirror, every one reflecting the Marrow house.
That's when it hit me, Alder Lane wasn't a neighborhood.
It was a loop.
A trap.
A mask made of picket fences and polite lies.
I don't know what they're hiding; i don't know what's real anymore.
But I know this:
They didn't adopt me because they wanted a son; they brought me here for something else.
Maybe because I survived WhiteHorse.
I learned how to move without sound in that house.
Which floorboards creaked, which doorknobs stuck.
Which walls were hollow when you knocked.
If they noticed me listening, they didn't say anything.
But they knew, they always knew.
At breakfast, Regina handed me toast like it was a transaction.
No butter, no jelly, just dry, brittle slices, and a smile that didn't reach her cheeks.
"You're settling in nicely," she said, i nodded; she didn't ask what I'd been dreaming about.
No one did.
The rules started changing, not in writing, not out loud, but I could feel it.
The piano in the drawing room was uncovered.
Fresh flowers replaced the fake ones by the staircase.
And every morning, one door downstairs was found wide open.
The pantry.
But nothing was ever taken, nothing but light.
One evening, I heard Isla arguing with their father in the study.
I couldn't make out the words, only her voice, cracking:
"He's not ready."
"He's not like the others."
"He'll remember."
Then silence, footsteps, and the unmistakable sound of a match being struck.
When I walked past the door an hour later, the entire room smelled of smoke—but nothing was burned.
Isla started talking to me, not much, but enough, she asked about my real mother.
I lied, told her Mom died in a fire, she tilted her head, like she didn't believe me.
But she didn't press, instead, she asked: "Do you ever feel like this place is watching you?"
I didn't answer, because it was a stupid question, and because I did.
At night, the whispers returned, but this time, they weren't in the walls.
They were in my head, too clean, too calm.
"You belong here, Mclainvic." "She sent you to us." "We're the second bloom."
I scratched the words out on paper, tore them up.
Flushed them down the toilet, but the next night, they were back.
Then I saw the photograph.
It was tucked in the back of a drawer in my attic desk, black and white, worn at the edges.
A group of people standing in front of the Marrow house—Regina, Dorian, others I didn't recognize. Holding candles. Wearing masks.
And in the corner of the photo…A woman, face hidden, but the dress was unmistakable.
Mom's dress!
The same one she wore the night I stabbed her, my breath caught.
That night, I knocked on Isla's door, "I need to know the truth," I said.
She didn't pretend to be confused, she didn't deny it, and she stepped aside.
Inside her room, the walls were covered in charcoal sketches—dozens, maybe hundreds.
The entire same figure.
Me!
Sometimes sleeping, sometimes standing in a field of flowers.
Sometimes with eyes completely black, she pointed to one near her desk.
"That one came before you moved in."
The sketch showed me in the attic, standing in front of the locked nursery door.
Hand on the knob.
Looking back.
I asked her how that was possible.
She just said:
"Because you were always supposed to be here, you just forgot."