That night, sleep refused to come. Lying in her childhood bed, Claire stared at the ceiling fan and listened to the wind rattling the windowpanes. Her mind spun with possibilities—maybe the trapdoor hid nothing but more junk, or perhaps it concealed something important: a box of letters, a long-lost family heirloom, or even the answer to why her father had locked her out so many years before. Memories of their final months together replayed in her head—his voice, sometimes lucid, sometimes lost, repeating, “Not everything needs to be found.”
But now, with the secret so close, Claire felt a new sense of responsibility, a need to see it through. As dawn painted the sky pink, she resolved to open the door—whatever lay beneath, she would face it, not as the overlooked daughter, but as the one chosen to keep the family’s secrets.