The next morning, the rain was gone, leaving the air damp and cool. Light came in through the tall windows, touching the dust in the air. Emma decided to keep going through the chest. She couldn't stop thinking about the letter.
Under a pile of postcards, she found a small leather photo album. The cover was worn and cracked, and one of the corners was torn away. She opened it slowly.
The first few pages were filled with old family pictures. Some she recognized—her grandmother as a young woman, her mother as a child. But halfway through, she stopped turning the pages.
One photograph made her pause. It showed her grandmother standing in front of the very same locked door at the end of the hallway. She wasn't smiling. In fact, she looked like she was guarding it.
Beside her grandmother stood a man Emma had never seen before. He was tall, dressed in dark clothes, and his face was partly turned away from the camera. But something about him felt strange, almost wrong, like he didn't belong in the picture.
Emma touched the photo, tracing the outline of the door. She noticed something else—the man's hand was holding a key. Not just any key. The same delicate one Emma had broken yesterday.
Her stomach tightened. This wasn't just a locked door in an old house. It was part of something bigger.
She closed the album and set it aside, but her mind wouldn't let it go. Whoever that man was, he knew what was behind the door. And now, so did she—at least a little.