Victor's POV
She stopped at the top of the staircase.
I'd been watching her hand on the banister the whole way up — the way her fingers wrapped around the cold iron with a kind of reverence, like she was afraid it might dissolve. Five years. She'd spent five years not touching this banister, not climbing these stairs, and now she was doing it like something sacred was happening with every step.
I was watching her and thinking about Emily.
Stop it.
"Which room?" she asked.
The question was simple. Innocent. But it sat in my chest like a stone.
I already knew which room she meant. She meant ours. The master bedroom on the second floor — the one I had instructed Jenkins to locked three days after the funeral and nobody had opened since. Not the maids. Not me. Not anyone.
"Sharon..."
"Our room," she said softly. She turned to look at me, and her eyes were full of something fragile. "Is it still there? Is it still... the same?"
