“Does she have a key?”
“Yeah. We both do.”
A nurse walked by pushing a cart. The wheels made a soft rattling sound, like coins in a jar. That sound dug into my nerves.
Around 2 a.m., a detective came to talk to me. He was polite, careful, the kind of man who probably never raised his voice because he didn’t need to.
“Any recent repairs?” he asked. “Any issues with the furnace?”
“My dad would’ve told me,” I said, then realized how little that meant when I’d been avoiding visits. Guilt flared hot and sharp.
“Who last had access to the house?”
“My sister,” I admitted. “Kara. But she said she’s out of town.”
The detective’s pen paused. “Where out of town?”
“She didn’t say. She just said ‘a few days.’”
He wrote it down anyway, and the scratch of pen on paper made me irrationally angry. Like he was turning my family into a case file.
At sunrise, Kara finally appeared in the hospital hallway wearing sunglasses indoors.
That was the first thing that made my stomach clench. Kara loved drama, but she loved looking composed even more. Sunglasses in a hospital at 7 a.m. felt like armor.
She pulled them off when she saw me, her eyes wide, glossy. Her perfume hit me next—something sweet and expensive, like vanilla and citrus. It felt obscene in that sterile hallway.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, rushing toward me. “Jamie. I just—Miles called me and I—how bad is it?”
“They’re in the ICU,” I said. My voice came out flat.
Her mouth fell open. She pressed her hand to her chest like she’d been punched. For a second I almost believed her.
Then she asked, too quickly, “Did the doctors say what caused it?”
“Carbon monoxide,” I said, watching her face.
Kara blinked. “Carbon monoxide? But… the alarms—”
“One was missing batteries,” I cut in. “Another was unplugged.”
Her eyes flicked away. Just for a moment. Toward the vending machines. Toward anything that wasn’t me.
“That’s… weird,” she said softly.
Weird. Like a mysterious stain. Like a wrong number call. Not like attempted death.
Miles stepped closer, his presence quiet but solid. “Where were you, Kara?”
She looked at him, then back at me. “A retreat,” she said. “Upstate. No service. It was supposed to be a reset.”
“A reset,” I echoed, because my brain got stuck on how normal she was trying to make it sound.
Kara nodded eagerly. “I texted you, remember? I told you we’d be out for a few days.”
“You told me to grab the mail,” I said. “And you mentioned the basement door.”
She waved a hand like that detail didn’t matter. “Yeah, it sticks. Dad always complains about it.”
The nurse opened the ICU doors briefly, and I caught a glimpse of my mom’s bed. Kara didn’t look. Not once. She kept her eyes on me, reading my face like it was a script she needed to follow.
Later that morning, Miles leaned in close. “I want to go back to the house.”
“What?” I whispered.
“We need to see what’s going on there,” he said. “CO doesn’t just spike like that without a reason. And the detectors… that’s not random.”
I should’ve said no. I should’ve said the house felt cursed now, like stepping inside again would break something in me permanently.
Instead, I nodded.
We drove back mid-afternoon. The neighborhood looked normal again—kids riding bikes, sprinklers ticking, someone mowing a lawn. It made my skin crawl. Like the world didn’t know it was supposed to be grieving.
Inside, the air still felt heavy. Even with the windows cracked, it held that stale, suffocating memory.
Miles moved like he’d been here a hundred times, straight to the hallway where the detector should’ve been. He stared at the spot on the wall. Two screw holes. A clean rectangle where dust hadn’t settled.
“It’s gone,” he said quietly.
My throat tightened. “Maybe the paramedics took it?”
He shook his head. “They said they brought in what they found. If it’s gone, it was removed.”
We checked the kitchen. The second detector was there—technically. It sat on the counter, unplugged, its cord curled like a dead snake.
Miles picked it up, flipped it over. “Battery compartment’s empty too.”
I felt heat rise behind my eyes. “Why would anyone—”
The back door creaked in the wind and I jumped so hard my heart stung.
