I sat on my bed, scrolling through notifications. None of them included me anymore, like I never even existed. Like this town had swallowed not only me, but everything I was before.

It was a lie, of course. The life I'd left back in the city had long since turned into a life of ghosts. Illness does that. Especially the one that took Mom. It didn't come suddenly. It crept up slowly, biting little pieces out of everything, until nothing was left but grief.

The guy I was seeing last year, Mark, was the first one to go, followed by my best friend, Jessica, who was all too eager to keep him company during all the times I skipped dates because someone had to watch Hailey while Dad was with Mom at the hospital.

When I found out, I was more sad than angry. Because deep down, I understood why. Teenage relationships don't exactly have much tolerance for problems and responsibilities and grief that hover above you like a storm cloud.

There's a saying, I think, that you only see who your true friends are when you're at your lowest. Sometimes, that truth is silence.

I put the phone away. Looked outside.

Underneath the pale white sky, the wind rocked the branches in a gentle lullaby.

Elise's steps creaked on the floorboards as she scuttled around the kitchen downstairs, muffled noises cut short by the steady sound of Jack chopping wood in the backyard.

It felt peaceful, in a way sitting in a shelter during a thunderstorm feels peaceful. The walls of the shelter they all kept me in were built of lies, and I'd had enough.

It was time for me to develop a strategy. A battle plan for the truth.

Not because I suddenly felt brave, or because Cold Creek had become any less wrong, but because the alternative felt like driving a car with a blindfold on, praying not to end up swerving off the road.

And I was done praying.

The truth was locked somewhere in the fortress made of my family's smiles and silences. A frontal attack, a direct confrontation, wasn't an option. By now, I had realized such an action would only make the walls thicker.

Instead, I would probe around them, searching for a crack, a loose brick, a structural weakness.

I started with the easiest of the three.

Dad.

The barn where he spent most of the day sat a little apart from the main house, darker and older, the wood gray with age and swollen with moisture. The door, which still hung a little bit off its hinge, was half open.

For several minutes I stood on the porch, gathering courage before I finally managed to cut through the hesitation and walk over.

As soon as I stepped inside the barn I was greeted by the smell of sawdust and iron. Dust motes floated in thin bands of light cutting through the cracks in the boards. Dad stood at a workbench with his flannel sleeves pushed up to the elbows, hands busy with a piece of wood clamped down in front of him. A plane sat near his right hand, and he began shaving the edge with slow, controlled strokes.

He looked… normal. The only sane thing in this insane place, and the thought that he might in some way be a part of it was almost unbearable.

His shoulders were tense, but his hands were steady. Familiar. The same hands that always found a way to fix things. Until they couldn't.

He lifted his head the moment I walked in. The plane stopped mid-stroke.

"Hey, Dad," I said.

He set the tool down gently, straightening up. His eyebrows drew together. "You okay?" he asked.

I bit back a laugh. I was everything but.

"I'm fine," I lied automatically, then corrected myself, because this was my plan, not my old reflex. "I mean, I'm… still adjusting, you know?" I forced a brief smile.

His eyes scanned my face in that way I was starting to hate, like he was searching for a lie. For a second I thought he might ask about Ethan. About Nell. About Lara and company. About all the things I hadn't told him because I knew he'd flip out.

Instead, he nodded once.

"That's… great," he said. It didn't sound like he was convinced, but he was letting me roll with it.

I walked closer, letting my fingers brush the edge of the workbench. The wood was cool and smooth under my fingertips.

"What are you making?" I asked.

Dad's posture loosened by a hair. He looked down at the piece of wood with intense focus.

"Swing set," he said, and a small, real softness flickered across his face. "For Hailey." He let out a breath. "I want to build her something better than the tire swing. Something more... permanent." He paused, lifting his gaze to look at me. "She's had enough change for one lifetime."

The words hit harder than they should have, because they were true, and because I knew he was saying them to me.

An apology.

"Yeah," I said quietly.

Dad picked up the plane again and ran it once along the wood, slow. I watched the curl peel away and fall to the floor.

"So," I said, deliberately light, "how does it feel being back here after twenty years?"

His hands paused again. Not as sharply as before, but enough that I saw it.

"It's… not the same," he said, but didn't elaborate.

I sat on the edge of the workbench and struck a playful tone. "Oh, come on. I've never even heard you talk about this place back home."

The plane moved again. One stroke. Two.

"Yeah, well, things were different back home," he said. "That changed when…" The plane faltered for a moment.

"When what?" I pressed.

He resumed working the plane with renewed vigor.

"When your mother… when Diane…" His hands trembled, just a little. I took hold of his forearm. The plane stopped.

"Dad." His reaction tore something in me open, something hidden, yet unhealed.

He met my gaze, and for one endless moment, in his eyes I saw a grief so vast it looked like a void. He blinked and it was gone. He simply looked tired, in the way of a man carrying a burden too heavy for too long.

I released him and continued, very gently. "Mom told me you guys met here. On the side of the road, northwest from town."

Dad's eyes closed for half a second, like the name pressed against something raw inside him.

No. It was too much. I needed to back up.

"I mean," I rushed, trying to soften it, "I remember her saying her car broke down. She was so mad about it. She told the story like it was the world's greatest inconvenience."

Dad's breath left him in a slow exhale.

"She was furious," he said, and there was a ghost of warmth in his voice now, a memory slipping through a crack. "She'd been driving all day. She hated asking for help."

"And you helped her?" I asked, as if I didn't already know the answer.

Dad's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "I did," he said. "I had a truck back then. I stopped when I saw her on the side of the road."

"And she wasn't weirded out by some random guy in the woods?" I asked.

"It wasn't the woods," he said a bit too fast, then caught himself. His jaw tightened at the word.

"I was thinking," I added casually, circling back, "after you guys fell in love and decided to get married, you left and didn't talk to your parents for twenty years. I mean, Hailey and I thought they were dead until a couple of months ago."

The plane stopped.

Dad's gaze sharpened, then smoothed, like he was forcing himself to stay calm. He set the plane down again, slowly.

"Kelsey," he said, a warning buried under my name.

I lifted both hands. "I'm not pressing. I'm just saying it's weird."

His jaw flexed. He looked away, toward the open barn door, toward the pale sliver of forest beyond, like it was listening.

"It was complicated," he said.

"In what way?"

His lips pressed tight. "Your mom couldn't stay here."

"Why?"

He paused, a small intake of breath. "Well, she had a life, a career. We agreed it was for the best."

That still didn't explain why he hadn't gone home or spoken to Jack and Elise for two decades, but I recognized evasion when I saw one.

And this one was an impenetrable wall.

Fine. I marked it and moved on.

I let my fingers trail over the wood again, as if I was just curious.

"Can I ask you something else?" I said.

Dad's gaze came back to mine. "Depends."

I almost smiled, even though I didn't feel like it. That was the closest thing to honesty I'd gotten in weeks.

"Why did you tell me not to go into the woods?" I asked, making my voice casual, like I was asking about the weather. "Is it because of wolves?"

The change in him was instant.

His shoulders tensed. His hand, the one nearest the plane, jerked a fraction in reflex. His eyes flashed, then faded into a practiced blankness.

If I hadn't been watching him like my life depended on it, I would have missed it.

My pulse jumped.

Dad recovered fast. Too fast.

"Yeah," he said, and his voice was too even. "This is mountain forest. It's thick. There are wolves, bears. People get lost."

He reached for the plane again like it could steady him, then started shaving wood with extra force, like he was punishing the plank for my questioning.

"Right," I said quietly, even though my skin was prickling. "Makes sense." I lied, deciding not to push. Not yet.

Instead, I stepped back and nodded toward the wood.

"So, the actual swing set," I said, forcing the topic back into safe territory. "Hailey's going to lose her mind."

Dad's shoulders loosened a fraction.

"Yeah," he said, softer. "I hope so."

I let the silence sit for a moment, watching him work. Then I stepped out of the barn and into the cold air like a person who wasn't seconds away from spiraling.