I stayed there, pressing the phone to my ear, listening to the emptiness.
Cold sweat trickled down my neck and into the small of my back. I stood up without turning on the light. I walked down the long hallway of my house—a house too big for two women… and for so many ghosts.
My name is Hélène de Villiers. I’m sixty-four years old. I’m a widow and live in a large house near La Rochelle, surrounded by swaying pines and the salty smell of the ocean.
After my son’s death, I thought I would live out my life in silence, my only company the echo of his footsteps in the empty rooms.
But that night, something snapped.
I knocked on my stepdaughter’s bedroom door.
“Valérie! Valérie, open up!”
The door burst open. Valérie Renaud, her hair disheveled and her face swollen from sleep, appeared through the crack.
“What now, Hélène?”
I grabbed her arm. I was out of breath, barely able to string two sentences together.
“Elias called me. He said… he said he was at the door. That he was cold.”
She frowned.
“You had a nightmare. Go back to bed.”
And suddenly…
THE DOORBELL RANG.
Long. Insistent. Urgent.
Valérie paled so much that I felt her arm stiffen under my fingers.
“No…” she whispered. “No, that’s impossible…”
