Chapter 1 - The Face Behind the Rain
The rain had been falling for thirty-one hours when Lily saw the girl.
Not ordinary rain.
Not the gentle September rain that tapped against windows and made people grateful for warm coffee and dry blankets. This rain came down in hard gray sheets, pounding rooftops, swallowing sidewalks, and turning the quiet streets of Bellweather into brown rivers.
By six that evening, the water had climbed halfway up the mailbox outside Ethan Cole's rented house.
By seven, the electricity began flickering.
And at 7:14, Lily stopped playing.
Ethan noticed because his daughter was rarely still.
Six-year-old Lily Cole could turn an empty cardboard box into a castle, a kitchen spoon into a magic wand, and a stuffed rabbit into the mayor of an imaginary town. That night, however, she stood silently beside the living-room window.
Her white stuffed rabbit was squeezed beneath one arm.
Her other hand rested against the glass.
"Lily?"
She didn't answer.
Ethan looked up from the battery-powered radio on the kitchen counter.
Emergency crews were warning residents to remain indoors. The bridge south of town had been closed. Two neighborhoods closer to the river had already been evacuated.
Ethan crossed the room.
"What is it, sweetheart?"
Lily pointed.
"There's a girl over there."
Ethan followed her finger.
Across the flooded street stood a house that had been abandoned for years.
His house.
Or at least it had been once.
The moment Ethan saw it, something cold moved through him.
The old Mercer Street house stood behind two enormous maple trees, its faded blue siding almost black beneath the storm. Several shutters were missing. Ivy climbed the porch columns. One section of gutter hung crookedly from the roof.
Nobody had lived there for nearly twenty years.
Ethan knew that better than anyone.
Because he had lived there as a child.
He had slept in the upstairs bedroom on the left.
He had eaten pancakes in the kitchen.
He had hidden beneath the staircase during thunderstorms.
And one terrible autumn morning, when he was eight years old, he had watched his family fall apart inside those walls.
He had never brought Lily here deliberately.
The rental had simply been the only available house when the evacuation warning forced them away from their apartment near the river.
At least, that was what Ethan had been telling himself.
"Lily," he said carefully, "there's nobody living there."
"Yes, there is."
"No, honey."
"I saw her."
Ethan looked again.
Rain streamed down the glass.
For several seconds there was nothing except darkness.
Then lightning flashed.
A figure stood behind the upstairs window.
Small.
Motionless.
A child.
Ethan's breath stopped.
The lightning vanished, plunging the house into darkness again.
He stepped closer.
"Did you see her?" Lily whispered.
Ethan couldn't answer.
Another flash illuminated the window.
The little girl was still there.
She appeared to be about Lily's age, perhaps six or seven. Dark brown hair framed a pale face. She wore something blue.
But that wasn't what made Ethan's stomach tighten.
It was what she held.
A white stuffed rabbit.
Long ears.
One ear pale lavender.
The other slightly bent.
Ethan looked down at Lily's arms.
Her rabbit was almost identical.
Lily called hers Clover.
Ethan had bought it from a secondhand shop three months earlier after Lily spotted it sitting alone on a shelf.
She had refused to leave without it.
"Daddy?"
Ethan barely heard her.
His mind had gone somewhere else.
A staircase.
A yellow kitchen.
A little girl's laughter.
Then a voice from twenty-five years ago.
Ethan, wait for me!
He backed away from the window.
Lily stared at him.
"You know her."
"No."
"You do."
"I don't."
Lily frowned with the unnerving certainty children sometimes possessed.
"Your face changed."
Ethan swallowed.
Behind them, Margaret Ellis entered the living room carrying two flashlights.
Margaret was their temporary landlord, a sixty-two-year-old widow who lived in the rear portion of the converted house. She had insisted Ethan and Lily stay downstairs with her while the storm worsened.
"What happened?" she asked.
Lily immediately pointed.
"There's a girl in the empty house."
Margaret froze.
It lasted only a second.
But Ethan saw it.
"You saw someone?" Margaret asked.
"Upstairs."
Margaret walked to the window.
The abandoned house disappeared behind another curtain of rain.
"Probably a reflection," she said.
"It wasn't."
"Lily—"
"She has my rabbit."
Margaret slowly turned.
"What?"
Lily held Clover up.
"The girl has the same one."
Margaret stared at the rabbit.
All the color seemed to leave her face.
Ethan noticed.
"Margaret?"
She looked away.
"Nothing."
"You recognize this?"
"No."
"You just reacted."
"I didn't."
Before Ethan could press her, thunder shook the windows.
The lights went out.
Lily gasped.
Ethan immediately crouched beside her.
"It's okay. I've got you."
Margaret switched on a flashlight.
Its beam swept across the room.
Then Lily whispered, "She's still there."
Ethan turned.
Across the street, behind the dark glass of the abandoned house, a tiny light had appeared.
Not electric.
A candle.
The girl stood beside it.
Watching them.
And now her hand was pressed against the window.
Lily slowly lifted her own hand.
The mysterious child mirrored her.
Margaret dropped the flashlight.
It hit the floor with a crack.
"Margaret?"
The older woman stared across the street.
Her lips trembled.
"No."
Ethan grabbed her shoulder.
"What is it?"
Margaret whispered something he almost couldn't hear.
"That window."
"What about it?"
"That was Sophie's room."
The name struck Ethan harder than the thunder.
Lily looked up.
"Who's Sophie?"
Nobody answered.
Ethan felt as though the floor had disappeared beneath him.
Sophie.
His little sister.
The sister his father said had died.
The sister his mother never mentioned again.
The sister Ethan had spent twenty-five years trying not to remember.
He looked toward the window.
Lightning illuminated the mysterious girl's face.
This time she stepped closer.
Ethan saw her eyes.
Her nose.
The tiny dimple beside her mouth.
And suddenly he was eight years old again, holding a family photograph taken three weeks before everything went wrong.
He remembered exactly who had been standing beside him.
Sophie.
Six years old.
Blue sweater.
White rabbit.
Ethan stumbled backward.
"Daddy!"
Lily grabbed his hand.
He looked at his daughter, struggling to breathe.
"That's impossible."
"What is?"
Ethan stared across the flood.
The girl remained at the window.
She raised the stuffed rabbit.
Then she pointed downward.
Toward the front door.
As if asking them to come over.
Margaret seized Ethan's arm.
"Don't."
He turned sharply.
"Why?"
"The water's too dangerous."
"That's not why."
Margaret's grip tightened.
"Ethan, listen to me."
"How do you know Sophie's name?"
Silence.
Rain hammered the roof.
Margaret's expression answered before her words did.
Ethan stared at her.
"You knew my family."
Margaret closed her eyes.
"Yes."
"How?"
"I lived three houses down."
Ethan searched her face.
Then another memory surfaced.
A younger woman bringing soup after his mother became ill.
A woman standing on their porch.
Miss Maggie.
His childhood neighbor.
"My God," Ethan whispered. "You're Maggie Ellis."
Margaret nodded.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I recognized you the first day you arrived."
Lily looked between them.
Ethan's voice hardened.
"And you said nothing?"
"I thought the past should stay buried."
"What past?"
Margaret looked toward the abandoned house.
"The part your father made everyone believe."
Ethan felt his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
"What are you talking about?"
Margaret didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she stared at the little girl across the street.
When she finally spoke, her voice was barely louder than the rain.
"Ethan, your sister didn't die in that house."
May you like
And for the first time in twenty-five years, Ethan realized the story he had built his entire life around might have been a lie.
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