“Lauren?” I called down the hall.

No one answered.

The house smelled of the fresh blue paint from the hallway job I’d finished two weeks earlier, mixed with a cool draft coming in off the back porch.

“She said she was helping,” Bennett whispered, keeping himself pressed close behind my hip as I walked.

“She said you wouldn’t be back from Columbus till Friday.”

“Bennett, who told you that?”

“Aunt Lauren,” he said, looking down at the runner.

“She said you’d be mad if I didn’t stay out of the hallway.”

I stopped at Bennett’s bedroom door.

A thin strip of yellow lamplight spilled across the floorboards from under the door.

The brass latch wasn’t caught.

It sat half an inch away from the wooden frame.

I pushed the bedroom door open with the flat of my hand.

Inside, the little braided rug by the bed had been shoved into the corner.