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There is a crunch of leaves underfoot as Sophie walks the long driveway flanked by mature trees. The branches curve from one side to the other, joining in the middle overhead like a sternum of a ribcage. The black sky locked behind. Or perhaps, Sophie considers, she is locked inside, her footsteps the beating heart.

“Have you noticed?” Sophie begins, observing the trees still clinging to their autumn leaves. “Everywhere else looks like winter. This is the only place that still shows signs of autumn.”

“Not that unusual,” Kai suggests matter-of-fact. “It’s less exposed here, in the valley—protected in its depression.”

Sophie nods. She wonders if this is true of humans as well as geological studies. Wonders if depression is a way to protect the soul from the onslaught of turbulent emotions that storm and bluster, leaving the person less exposed to the world outside.

For a brief moment, a thought sneaks through her mind; a possibility that Jessica was protecting herself from the outside world with her insatiable lust for life and love and laughter. A bright facade, a cheerful veneer, while, deep inside, winter grasped. But this is a fleeting thought, because to believe this would be to believe the coroner. And Sophie doesn’t believe.

Doesn’t want to believe, she reminds herself.

On the canvas of her mind, she sees Jessica’s face on the gurney, and it morphs to Rhian’s, to the girl called Carys she saw on the news this morning. But what she really sees is a connection. Parts of a Frankenstein puzzle with the pieces missing. She is still thinking of her resolve to find those missing pieces when they round a corner, exposing the Coach House in its entirety.

“Whoa!” Sophie stops like held breath.

The Coach House is majestic, far exceeding the beauty and grandeur of Carmen’s London home with the devil’s eye door. And it’s different. Different from the other houses she’s seen in the desolate and impoverished town of Llangellen.

It’s beautiful.

Thick fog levitates above the dwelling, partially concealing the roof and chimneys (of which, Sophie counts twelve but senses there’re more), making the chimney tops look like they are suspended in midair. Warm yellow lights dot the Tudor style windows, scattered across three levels, and the faint sound of a violin serenades into the night.

“Kai, wait,” Sophie says. She stops at the bottom of the stairway that leads to the grand dwelling. She feels sick in her stomach to ask this question. “This place looks… expensive. How much do they charge a night?”

She thinks about her pitiful bank account, and though it sickens her, she thinks about how much it might cost to bury her sister, if she can even afford to bury her. Because believe the coroner or not, one thing is certain. Jessica will still end up in the ground, rotting away to nothing.

Kai spits a bemused laugh. “You’re not in London now—it’s as cheap as chips.”

Easy for you to say. Sophie’s bank account holds little more than three hundred pounds and won’t be rising anytime soon if she doesn’t sort out new employment. So, as cheap as chips are, one night in this majestic dwelling might cause bankruptcy. The Coach House’s beauty suddenly becomes intimidating.

Only once does Sophie ever remember experiencing opulence firsthand, as opposed to the countless times she has lived it vicariously through cleaning stately homes for her wealthy employers.

It’s a distant memory—a fractured memory, almost out of reach. She sees the snapshots in her mind. The rich burgundy carpet plush between her bare toes. Morning sunlight dancing through a gap in the curtains upon rows and rows of leather-bound books, the illegible titles she is too young to decipher glinting gold. Smokey aromas of a morning fire crackling in an open hearth bigger than she. Jessica’s tiny hand in her own. Her own name called by the voice of an angel. A world beyond her. The peculiar and never-again sense of belonging. Of comfort. Of safety.

As an adult looking back on history—the limited family history Sophie has available to her—she knows herself to have been four when this memory was forged. Her fourth birthday—their—birthday, was when everything changed, and her sister became the only familiar thing in a suddenly fearful world full of strangers and cold, dark, empty places.

And she heard the angel’s voice no more.

A shiver runs up Sophie’s spine, and the hairs on the back of her neck tingle. She feels watched. She turns to Kai, but he’s paying no attention to her. He’s clicked off his torch now the house lights the way and is rummaging through his pockets. By the jingle it produces, he’s found the front door key. Perhaps the shame from her childhood memory resurfacing is making her feel on edge, much in the way the sense of being watched plagues the guilty. She doesn’t like to remember the past and what her life could have been if not struck by tragedy and misfortune. But there is something, a delicate sense of connection between an observer and the observed. Sophie wonders if this is true by reflecting on memories? Does the past feel the eyes of the future looking back, the same sense perhaps, alerting a deer to stiffen and raise her head before a hunter’s shot?

Sophie feels this sensation now.

She looks over her shoulder at the sprawling gardens hidden by nighttime’s cloak. There is something—someone, in the shadows; a smudge of darkness blacker than the surrounding night. Her eyes squint, attempting to decipher the tall, bulky shape, but it moves back into the silhouette of a giant oak and stills, as if hoping to remain unseen.

“There’s someone watching us,” Sophie whispers, but Kai has already gone ahead to the grand entrance. Sophie climbs the steps, and once behind Kai, looks back over her shoulder—but is nothing there but the ghost of an idea; a fragment of her own imagination playing tricks under the night’s shroud.

The double doors moan open, and a muted sepia glow floods across the flagstone floor surrounding Sophie. From within, the haunting violin continues its solo lament, calling Sophie forward.

She steps over the threshold…

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