Chapter 4 - The Shadow in the Yard
The back door stood wide open, the screen door swinging loosely against the aluminum siding in the cool night wind.
James stood on the back deck, the beam of his heavy iron flashlight cutting a sharp white swath across the damp lawn and the dark line of woods at the edge of our property. The beam swept across the garden beds, the children’s plastic slide, and stopped dead at the base of the old oak tree near the property line.
A single object sat neatly on the wooden picnic table.
"Stay inside, Clara," James hissed, his voice dangerously low as he stepped off the deck into the wet grass.
"Don't go out there alone," I called out, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I thought it might crack my sternum. Lily began to stir against my chest, whimpering softly at the sudden tension in my body.
James didn't listen. He marched across the lawn, his boots crunching loudly on the gravel path. When he reached the picnic table, he swept the flashlight beam over the object sitting in the center.
It was a small, worn leather baby shoe. A blue leather oxford, identical to the ones Leo had worn when he was twelve months old. But Leo’s baby shoes were currently packed away in a memory box in the attic, locked in a trunk with a heavy brass padlock.
James picked up the shoe, inspecting it closely under the light. Then, he shone the beam toward the tree line.
A figure was standing at the edge of the woods.
It was a woman, wearing a dark trench coat that swallowed her silhouette in the shadows. Her face was obscured by the hood, but even from fifty yards away, I could see the unnatural stillness of her posture. She wasn't running. She wasn't hiding. She was simply standing there, watching us with an intensity that felt heavy enough to crush bone.
"Hey!" James shouted, taking a step toward the woods. "Who are you? Get off my property!"
The woman didn't move. Instead, she slowly raised her hand, pointed directly at the bundle I was holding against my chest in the doorway, and then turned, melting silently into the impenetrable blackness of the trees.
May you like
James chased her all the way to the fence line, beating the brush with his flashlight, but when he reached the other side, there was nothing. Just a broken twig, a faint scent of cheap lavender perfume lingering in the damp air, and a second object tucked into the wire mesh of the fence: a crumpled piece of hospital stationery with a single line of handwritten text scrawled in jagged ink.
“She was never yours to keep.”
