I tried to act like everything was normal, but I couldn’t shake the image of Nate’s branded palms. The insignia was seared into my mind, a symbol that felt wrong, out of place. I knew what I’d seen, but I didn’t know what it meant. And Nate? He’d built a wall between us. That conversation in the bathroom had been the closest I’d come to breaking through, but I hadn’t. Not really.
It wasn’t until one evening, when Nate was in the backyard and Lila was in the kitchen, that something happened that made me realize just how deep this went.
I was standing in the hallway, staring at the door to the guest room. It had been Nate’s space for the summer, and it had stayed mostly untouched. He had settled into it with that quiet air of detachment, and I hadn’t dared to intrude. But tonight, something was different. There was a feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me I needed to go in.
I walked to the door, my hand resting on the doorknob. I hesitated. Was this an invasion? Was I overstepping? But then I remembered his hands. The insignia. Something was wrong, and I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
I opened the door quietly and stepped inside.
The room was dim, the curtains drawn to keep out the fading daylight. There were clothes scattered across the floor, but everything else was neat enough. Nate’s backpack was perched on the chair by the desk, the zipper half open. My eyes immediately fell on the small filing cabinet in the corner of the room. It was one of those metal ones with a single drawer, the kind you use to store documents or old papers. The drawer was slightly open, just enough to make me curious.
I knew I shouldn’t be snooping. But I couldn’t stop myself.
I walked over to the cabinet and pulled the drawer open slowly. Inside, there were a few old papers—some blank notebooks, a few receipts. But beneath those, there was a small envelope, yellowed with age. I pulled it out, my fingers trembling. The envelope felt oddly heavy, as if it contained something important, something that didn’t belong.
I opened it carefully, almost reverently. Inside, there were several photographs. They were old, faded, and yellowing at the edges. I spread them out on the desk, each image more disturbing than the last.
The first picture was of a group of police officers, standing together in front of a building. They looked stern, serious. But it wasn’t the officers that caught my attention. It was the figure standing among them—Nate.
It was impossible. This was a photo of him, probably taken years ago, but his face was unmistakable. He was standing there, wearing the same haunted expression he’d worn when he first arrived at our house. His eyes were wide, his shoulders slumped, just like he was now.
The second photo was even worse. It was of a small house—familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. In the foreground, there were two figures: one was a man in a uniform, the other was a woman, standing close to him. She had long dark hair, and her face was obscured by the angle of the camera, but her posture was defensive, like she was trying to shrink away from the man. But the most unsettling part? The man’s hand was resting on the woman’s shoulder, and there was something off about the way he held her—like it was too possessive, too controlling.
My heart raced. This was starting to make sense in a way I didn’t want it to.
