Page 36 of Lost Echoes
Ember grips the edge of the table. “We have to stop hiding in corners and chasing scraps. We work together. Share everything we know, pool it before they erase it.”
Luke nods grimly. “Phoenix is waiting on our next move. He’s already warned us that we’re now on their radar. We don’t have much time.”
I lean back in my chair, the bear’s paper edges cutting into my palm through my pocket. The words echo in my head—Don’t touch it. Don’t let them hand it to you.
I’m not sure if working together makes us safer… or paints a target so bright even the walls of this house won’t keep us safe.
“We’ll start small,” Ember says, determination burning in her eyes. “Share what we find, no secrets. If Phoenix has evidence, we back it up a dozen ways. And if any of us hears something new, we tell the others immediately.”
Luke nods. “And we stay low. No patterns, no obvious searches.” He gives Ember’s hand a squeeze. “We can do this.”
I want to believe him. For tonight, I let myself.
We part ways, and I head home to my little cottage after grabbing some food for later. By the time I reach the front door, the air has chilled significantly. Crickets sing. My phone’s light sweeps across the front porch where a moth flutters against the glass. Everything looks the same, but I don’t feel the same.
Inside, I set down my keys and drift to the closet where old boxes wait, stacked in careless towers. I should sleep but instead tug one free then sit cross-legged on the rug.
I lift the lid.
Inside lay photos, letters, a handful of trinkets that smell faintly of cedar and time. My mother’s handwriting curls across some envelopes. I let my fingers drift over them, wondering why I always end up here after nights like this.
One folded paper slips free from a notebook. A grocery list on one side—bread, soap, flour. On the back, scrawled like an afterthought—Ask about the Radley grant.
The words jolt me.
I stare, heart thudding. Did my mother know?
But then the logic rushes in like water plugging a leak. Radley was a research hospital, wasn’t it? Back then, it could’ve been just another funding note, a line from town meetings or one of her community projects. She always scribbled things like that on scraps of paper—lists of calls to make, questions to ask.
I fold the paper carefully then slide it back into the notebook.
It doesn’t have to mean anything. It probably doesn’t.
Still, when I turn off the light and lie in bed, the words echo through my head like a whisper I can’t quiet.
Ask about the Radley grant.
The phrase loops in my mind. Over and over. But then I see the woman at the support group, her eyes sharp with warning. Don’t touch it. Don’t let them hand it to you. And the memory of my own childish scrawl—the one-eyed bear I’d forgotten until tonight—presses against me like a bruise.
What if Mom knew something? What if she was trying to tell me in the only way she dared?
My pulse quickens.
I sit up, then force myself back down, clutching the quilt to my chest. “No,” I whisper into the dark. “I’m chasing shadows. Looking too hard for clues that aren’t there.”
The house creaks around me, settling deeper into the night. I close my eyes and try to believe my own words. My mom had nothing to do with any of this. It was Regina Brannon. My stepmother and mom couldn’t even look at each other. There’s no way they would both get involved in something like this. I’m definitely making too much of nothing.
I close my eyes and try to believe my own words.
The quilt muffles my breath, and the cottage presses quiet around me. Too quiet. Then just at the edge of hearing, something shifts outside. A faint crunch of gravel, a twig snapping where nothing should move.
My eyes fly open.
I hold my breath, straining, waiting for it to come again. The silence returns, deep and heavy, as if the night itself is listening back.
It’s nothing. A deer or the wind. My imagination running wild after too many secrets.
Still, I don’t get up to check. I pull the quilt tighter and lie rigid in the dark, every nerve alive with dread. Perhaps I’ll pull together answers from my sleep.
