Masey was jerked awake by the piercing shrill of a phone. It was the landline in her father’s study. She’d fallen asleep while working on June’s case again. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, sitting upright in her chair. Her fifteen-year-old baby sister. Well, she would have been turning twenty in three days.

She stretched and reached over for the old phone, knocking over a half-empty bottle of shiraz onto some open case files. “Shit,” she muttered, her chair falling over in her haphazard attempt to clean up the mess before the liquid did any further damage. A difficult attempt as the only light in the room was a sliver that filtered in through the partially closed curtains. The room was shrouded in a dense haze of cigarette smoke, the air heavy with the aroma of smoldering tobacco.

The phone cried incessantly, and with a heavy heart, she pressed the receiver to her ear, her pulse quickening.
“Edgar, any news?” She hated the tremble in her voice.
A heavy sigh crackled through the line. “Miss Wright, I’ve exhausted every lead. The trail’s gone cold. I’m truly sorry.”

The words hung in the air, each syllable an excruciating weight that pressed down on her chest. She blinked away the tears and stared at the scattered case files, the ink smudged by the spilled wine, now resembling the muddled mess of her hopes. Her fingers tightened around the receiver, knuckles blanching. Another dead end. Same old story. Different day. Different investigator. Only this time, this had been the last of the money they could spare.

“But,” Edgar continued, hesitating, “there’s this one thing. I don’t think it’s worth much, but I came across a property, an old place in Maplewood in the Coltia Province. Your sister’s name never came up directly, but someone connected to her case owned it, briefly. Then it got transferred. Fast. Too fast.”
Masey frowned, straightening. “Transferred to who?”
“That’s the weird part. A shell company, Bluecrest Capital. No real owner listed, just a dead-end paper trail. Probably nothing, but I figured I’d mention it.”
Nothing. Like everything else.
“Thanks, Edgar,” she said, voice clipped. “I appreciate it.”
“If you want, I can—”
“Thank you, Edgar,” she interjected, ending the call abruptly before she could hear another apology.

The silence that followed was deafening. She sank back into her chair, the leather creaking beneath her. She look up at the cutout pinned to the corkboard, Junie’s smiling face, forever fifteen. Then her eyes drifted to the headline above, “Teen Vanishes on Way Home from School: Community in Shock.” The room seemed to close in, the walls bearing down with the weight of accumulated despair. The smoke curling in lazy, suffocating spirals.

“I don’t know, Maisey, it’s just… do you like, ever have the weird feeling that someone’s watching you?”
Maisey had barely looked up from her laptop. Emails, deadlines, the weight of a new container transporting some high-valued pieces for her client pressed on her, she had too much on her plate.
“Sometimes… I guess. It’s probably nothing,” she remembered saying it, dismissing it with a flick of her hand. “You’re overthinking.”
June had hesitated, shifting on her feet, for a second, she remembered that too. And she had meant to say something. Maybe even take it seriously. But then her phone buzzed, and the moment was gone.

The silence was heavy now. No more half-spoken worries, no more chance to listen. It was all gone. Maisey stood at the doorway of June’s bedroom, fingers gripping the edge of the doorframe. The air was stale, undisturbed. The same Pokémon throw blanket still tossed haphazardly over the bed. Like Junie had just gotten up and out of it, instead of it now being six years since. The same half-full perfume bottle on the dresser.

She had stood here before. Many times. Every time, she’d tell herself she’d pack things away. Box up the clothes, strip the bed, throw out the unopened letters. And every time, a gut-wrenching feeling would tie her stomach into knots, turn her legs into cooked noodles and squeeze around her heart. Because what if June came home and found her room unrecognisable? She would have survived whatever torture her captor subjected her only to find that her own family had given up on her.

What if moving on meant admitting it was her fault? But it was, wasn’t it? Her own voice echoed in her head. It’s been six years now. Six years had crawled by in agonising silence, the void of news stretching endlessly like a canyon no echo dared to cross. She had to do this damn it! How much more of this could she take?

Sucking in a breath to steel her, Maisey stepped through the threshold, a huge box tucked underneath her arm. She’d start with stripping the bed.

Two hours later, she was combing through the clutter in June’s study desk, separating what she would give away and what they would keep. Maisey flipped through June’s scrapbook, its pages thick with memories, her fingers tracing the edges of cutouts, concert tickets, and half-faded ink. The scent of old paper mixed with the lingering smell of wine, cigarette smoke, and the weight of a past she couldn’t shake. Then, she saw it.

A Polaroid, wedged between two pages. Her breath caught as she pulled it free.
Disneyland. A bright, stupidly happy day. Their parents, June in her oversized Mickey ears, and him, Jackson, standing beside her mother, his arm draped casually over her shoulder. Maisey had taken the picture herself, capturing a moment she had once thought meant something. For a second, she could almost hear the laughter, feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, taste the sickeningly sweet candy floss.

Jack. Her heart clenched. The man she had loved. The man she had tried so damn hard to fix. So damn hard. He had always been so good at making her feel needed, like she was the only thing keeping him from spiraling. But love wasn’t enough, not when the late-night disappearances turned into excuses, not when his jealousy twisted into something suffocating. And definitely not when she found herself making excuses for him, covering for him, believing his promises to change until it started to cost her. She had walked away. And in doing so, she had let him fall.

Maisey exhaled sharply tracing her thumb over his smiling face, flipping the Polaroid over. No note. No date. Just another ghost from a life that felt like a dream someone else had lived. Shaking herself, she moved back to the desk. The box at her feet was half full, textbooks and comics stacked neatly inside. She yanked open the last drawer too hard, too fast ripping the lining inside. The fabric tore, curling at the edges, and beneath it… something rattled.

A hidden compartment? Heart hammering, she dug her fingers into the gap, prying it open. Inside, covered in a thin layer of dust, was an old phone. Slowly, she picked it up, her thumb brushing over the scratched screen. It was dead. Of course it was.
Hands slightly unsteady, she grabbed a charger from the nightstand, plugging it in. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then…

A flicker. The screen lit up.

Maisey sucked in a breath as it powered on, the old device taking its time, sluggish from disuse. Then, the home screen appeared. No password. A spark of something warm and bubbly tingled in her chest as she went through it. Her stomach twisted as she opened the messages app. There weren’t many, but the last conversation caught her attention.

Ketchum: Hey, you sure?
June: Yeah. I trust you.
Ketchum: I can book it. Just us.
Ketchum: Swear. Bluecrest owns the place. No one asks questions.
June: Okay. See you soon.

Bluecrest. Maisey’s pulse kicked up a notch. Bolting from the bedroom, she burst into her father’s study, scrambled for her laptop and searched through her emails, her mind racing. She pulled up Edgar’s last email. The location was there. There it was, Maplewood. The connection. June had planned to go there with someone!

Maisey’s breath came fast and sharp. Was this it? The final missing piece that the police and so many other had failed to see?

Maisey shoved the old phone into a rucksack. She’d waited six years for something, anything, to break this case open. She grabbed her coat, her keys, threw some necessities into that bag and left a note on the fridge. When she finally had her car key poised to unlock the door, that’s when she hesitated for half a second, before pulling out her phone, dialing Edgar. Voicemail.

The question gnawed at her, should she wait? Call for backup, just in case? The danger was undeniable. This person, whoever they were, had stolen her sister away nearly a decade ago. The thought hit her like a punch to the gut, forcing a curse to slip past her lips. Enough. She wasn’t waiting anymore. She was going to Maplewood, but first, she’d make a quick stop at the pawn shop.

Six hours, two provinces and four hundred kilometers later, Maisey slowly eased her car onto the gravel driveway. The crunch of the tires breaking the stillness of the afternoon. A secluded cabin by the lake loomed ahead rustic, cosy, and bathed in the bright glow of the mid-morning sun. Before stepping out, she tucked the cold barrel of the revolver into the waistband of her jeans the chill biting against her skin as she concealed it beneath her hoodie.

Dried yellow and orange leaves littered the ground, crunching loudly beneath her boots with each deliberate step. The sound echoed in the quiet, amplifying her unease as she approached the house. This wasn’t what she had braced herself for. A dilapidated, rotting shell barely clinging to life? The perfect place to hide a dead body so it could never be found? Yes. Immaculate flowerbeds of honeysuckle, their delicate blooms spilling over the edges and perfuming the air? No. The sweet, familiar scent teased her senses, a cruel contrast to the tension coiling in her chest.

The wooden stairs groaned under her weight as she ascended, each creak a sharp reminder of her presence. She paused on the porch, the air thick with anticipation. Drawing in a shaky breath, she lifted one trembling hand to the door. Her other hand reached behind her, fingers curling tightly around the grip of the gun. The weight of it was both a comfort and a burden as she knocked, the sound reverberating through the stillness like a challenge.

The silence was short-lived. Maisey barely finished her knock before the quick, rhythmic patter of tiny footsteps echoed from inside the house, followed by heavier, deliberate ones. Her pulse quickened.
“Where are you going, silly?” A woman’s voice filtered through the half-lite door, soft and familiar, her silhouette appearing faintly behind the curtain covering the glass panels. The sound hit Maisey like a lightning strike gripping her memory, rattling her composure. No, it couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.

The door swung open with ease, sunlight spilling over the woman and the cherub-like toddler perched on her hip. Her smile beamed brightly at first, eyes crinkling with warmth until recognition shattered her expression. In the twinkling of an eye, her cheer dissolved faster than candy floss in water. The little boy clung to her, unaware between the two adults.
“You…” Maisey’s voice faltered. Blood drained from her face. Her arms lost all their strength and fell like dead weights to her sides. She stumbled back a little, the world tilted a little on its axis. It couldn’t be. This wasn’t real. After all these years.

The woman whispered Maisey’s name, as if testing reality herself. Maisey’s knees buckled under the weight of the moment, but before she could say anything, another voice rang out — a man’s, booming and close. His heavy footsteps drew nearer.
“Honey, who’s at the do—”

Maisey’s gaze met his as he stepped forward, his eyes bulging wide with recognition. The colour drained from his face, and time seemed to freeze. Her vision blurred, her head spun. The last thing Maisey saw before darkness consumed her was Jack’s face staring, shocked, unyielding, as the world crumbled around her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Benjamin Williams on Unsplash