Chapter 13
A Mother's Secret
While sifting through her mother’s personal effects, long stored away, Angela discovers a hidden journal. The entries are sporadic, filled with a young woman’s hopes and fears, but interspersed are cryptic passages that hint at a deeper awareness of the disappearances plaguing the city. Her mother wrote about feeling watched, about strange encounters, and a growing dread that she was somehow connected to the unfolding tragedy. Could her mother have known one of Ridgeway's victims? Or worse, did she witness something? The journal suggests her mother's disappearance was not random, but potentially tied to her own investigations into the goings-on around the river.
The attic air hung thick and cloying, a stale testament to years of undisturbed dust. Angela coughed, the sound a dry rasp lost in the cavernous space. Sunlight, strained through a grimy windowpane, painted hazy shafts across forgotten relics of a life she barely remembered. Boxes, stacked precariously, bore the faded ink of her mother’s name, a ghost in her own handwriting. Sheriff Miller had finally agreed to let her sift through them, a reluctant concession to her relentless pursuit. He’d warned her it would be painful, a reopening of old wounds, but pain was a familiar companion.
She’d started with the clothing, the delicate fabrics brittle with age, the scent of lavender and something else, something intrinsically her mother, still clinging to them. Each item was a tiny, sharp shard of memory, a flicker of warmth in the icy void. A pale blue dress, the kind a young woman might wear to a dance, hung limp and lifeless. Angela traced the delicate embroidery on the collar, imagining her mother laughing, her hair catching the light. The image was fleeting, a mirage in the desert of her childhood.
Beneath a pile of neatly folded linens, her fingers brushed against something hard and unyielding. A small wooden box, intricately carved with swirling patterns, lay nestled in the shadows. It was locked. Her heart gave a lurch, a frantic bird trapped in her chest. This felt different. This felt important. She rummaged through a nearby drawer, her movements growing more urgent, until her hand closed around a small, tarnished key. It fit.
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