Chapter 2: The Word That Stopped the Room
The soldier didn't look at Raymond.
He didn't look at Harrison or Eleanor or Victoria.
He looked only at me.
"Colonel," he said, his voice steady and clear in the frozen air.
"The team is ready when you are."
The word landed like a stone dropped into still water.
*Colonel.*
Raymond's coffee cup stopped halfway to his mouth.
Victoria made a small sound — not quite a word.
Harrison stepped onto the front porch, and for the first time that morning, he had nothing to say.
Eleanor whispered, "What did he just call her?"
A second soldier stepped out of the rear vehicle carrying a folded document case.
He handed it to me without a word.
I opened it, glanced at the first page, and closed it again.
"What is that?" Victoria demanded.
"What is in that folder?"
I didn't answer her.
I turned to the soldier.
"Give me four minutes."
He nodded.
"Yes, Colonel."
I walked back into the kitchen — Marcus's kitchen — and set the document case flat on the table where Eleanor's candy bowl had been sitting all morning.
Then I looked at my father.
"This house," I said quietly, "is not what you think it is."
Harrison's face changed.
He recognized something.
I could see it — a flicker of old memory crossing his expression.
His mouth opened, then closed.
He knew something.
May you like
Something he had never told the rest of them.
And he was terrified I was about to say it out loud.
