Chapter 10
Maya turned the deadbolt with a metallic clunk and pulled the heavy oak door open a few inches. The cool night air rushed in, carrying the scent of damp earth and falling leaves. Tom stood on the porch, his face lined with deep weathered wrinkles and his graying beard unkempt, looking nervously over his shoulder before fixing his tired eyes on her.
"Maya?" he asked, his voice gravelly and hesitant, as if he weren't quite sure the person standing before him was real. "Good Lord... you’re the spitting image of your mother."
Maya’s hand tightened on the edge of the door. "Tom? What are you... what are you doing here? Eleanor said you moved out of state ten years ago."
Tom let out a dry, humorless chuckle, shaking his head slowly as he shifted the heavy duffel bag from one shoulder to the other. "Eleanor had a lot of ways of making people disappear, Miss Faraz. Some she paid off; some she scared off. Your father tried to keep me around, but after your mother passed... well, the house wasn't safe for anyone who remembered how things used to be."
He stepped closer, his boots scraping softly against the stone porch. He reached into the deep pocket of his denim jacket and pulled out a small, tarnished silver pocket watch—the exact twin of the one her father used to carry on Sundays. "Your dad found me last month. He knew his time was short. He told me if anything happened to him, I was to come back here and make sure you got the truth about what happened to the old boathouse property."
May you like
Maya stared at the pocket watch, the memories flooding back with sudden, blinding intensity. The boathouse down by the lake—a place Eleanor had declared condemned and strictly off-limits—held the answers to the deepest secrets of her family’s past. She swung the door wide open, stepping aside to let the old groundskeeper into the warmth of the hallway.
"Come inside, Tom," Maya said, her voice steady and resolute. "It’s time we finish what my father started."
