They are not here to visit. They are here to break in.
I let the curtain fall back into place.
The silence of the house is no longer peaceful. It is the silence of a held breath before the scream.
I step back from the window, and for the first time in a year, I feel the old familiar feeling of being small.
But then I look at the deed to the house sitting on the hall table. I look at the security panel on the wall.
They think I am the daughter who waits on the stairs for scraps. They think this is a family dispute.
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. I do not call them. I do not go out to greet them.
I watch the red light on the security panel blink.
Let them try.
They have no idea who lives here now.
I watch them through the wrought iron bars of the gate. The metal is freezing against my palm, biting into the leather of my gloves, but I hold on to it as if it is the only thing keeping reality anchored.
The two SUVs sit idling, their exhaust pipes puffing gray smoke into the crisp air of Glenn Haven. Behind them, a white utility van with the words PRECISION LOCK & KEY stenciled on the side completes the convoy.
The driver’s door of the lead SUV opens, and my father steps out.
Graham Caldwell does not step onto the snow-dusted pavement like a man visiting his estranged daughter for the holidays. He steps out like a general surveying a battlefield he has already won.
He adjusts the collar of his cashmere coat, buttons it over his paunch and looks up at the manor house with a gaze that is entirely devoid of wonder. He is assessing it. He is calculating square footage, heating costs and market value.
The passenger door opens and Marilyn emerges.
She is already in character. I can see it in the way she hunches her shoulders, pulling her fur coat tighter around herself, appearing smaller and more fragile than she actually is.
She looks up at the house, then at me standing behind the gate, and I see her hand go to her mouth. It is a gesture of theatrical shock, practiced to perfection in front of mirrors for decades. Her eyes are already glistening. She has likely started working up the tears the moment they crossed the town line.
And then there is Derek.
My younger brother climbs out of the back seat of the second SUV. He does not look at me. He does not look at the house’s beauty or the menacing gray sky. He is looking at his phone, then at the utility pole down the street, and then at the thick conduit lines running along the side of the manor’s perimeter wall.
He wears a hoodie under a blazer, his attempt at tech entrepreneur chic, and he looks wired, his eyes darting with a frantic, greedy energy.
I do not press the button to open the gate. I stand my ground, the cold wind whipping my hair across my face.
Graham walks up to the gate, stopping two feet away. He doesn’t say hello. He doesn’t say Merry Christmas.
He simply nods, as if acknowledging an employee who has arrived late to a meeting.
“Open it up, Clare,” he says. “It’s freezing out here.”
I stare at him.
The audacity is so pure, so unadulterated, that it is almost impressive.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
My voice is calm, which surprises me. I had expected it to shake.
Graham sighs, a puff of white air escaping his lips. He looks annoyed that he has to explain himself.
“You’re not a ghost, Clare. You’re sloppy. You posted a photo on that architecture forum three months ago,” he says. “A close-up of a gargoyle on the east cornice. You asked for advice on limestone restoration.”
I feel a cold pit open in my stomach. I remember that post. I had used a burner account. I had cropped the background.
Graham smiles, a thin, tight expression.
“You didn’t scrub the metadata,” he says. “And even if you had, that gargoyle is unique to the Vanderhovven estate. It took Derek about ten minutes to cross-reference it. You really should be more careful if you’re trying to hide from the people who love you.”
Love.
The word hangs in the air like a foul smell.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
Marilyn steps forward then, flanking Graham. She reaches through the bars, her fingers grasping at the air near my arm.
“Oh, Clare,” she chokes out, her voice wobbling with a vibrato that would have won awards on daytime television. “How can you ask that? It’s Christmas. Families belong together at Christmas. We couldn’t let you spend it all alone in this mausoleum.”
Her eyes dart over my shoulder to the house again, and the grief in her expression momentarily flickers into appraisal.
“It’s very big, isn’t it? Much too big for one person. You must be terrified.”
“I’m not terrified,” I say. “And I’m not alone. I’m solitary. There’s a difference. Go away.”
I turn to walk back toward the house, but Derek’s voice stops me.
It is not emotional. It is purely logistical.
“Hey, the voltage here is industrial, right?” he shouts from near the van. “The listing said the previous owner had a kiln. That means three-phase power.”
I stop and turn back.
Derek isn’t looking at me. He’s signaling to the driver of the second SUV to pop the trunk.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
Derek doesn’t answer. He just waves his hand and the trunk flies open.
Inside, I see them.
Computer towers. Not standard desktops, but open-air rig frames dense with graphics cards and cooling fans. Mining rigs. Servers. The blinking, heating, energy-sucking leeches that had caused him to be evicted from his last three apartments.
Graham answers for him.
“Derek needs a place to set up his hardware, Clare. His startup is in a critical phase. He needs a stable environment with high amperage and low ambient temperature. A basement in a stone house in winter is perfect.”
“He is not setting up anything here,” I say, walking back to the bars. “This is my property. You are trespassing. Leave now.”
Graham chuckles darkly.
He reaches into the inside pocket of his coat. He pulls out a folded document. It is thick legal-sized paper, stapled at the corner.
“Actually,” he says, smoothing the paper against the iron gate so I can see it. “We’re not trespassing. We’re tenants.”
I squint at the document. The header is standard boilerplate for a residential lease. But my eyes widen as I scan the terms.
Tenant: Derek Caldwell and Graham Caldwell.
