"The geometry is wrong," his father’s notebook read. Beneath a skewed sketch of a doorway, a single sentence shivered: That's how she looked back then. A floorboard creaked upstairs. A deliberate, weighty shift. Then a voice drifted from the dark—a flawless reproduction of his father's cadence. "Nathan," it called. "Come up." Nathan froze. His father was buried weeks ago. Whatever waited above was playing a dead man's voice like a newly tuned instrument.

The screen showed no name. A number I didn't recognize, and a call timer reading eleven minutes and fifty-three seconds. Nearly twelve minutes. Long enough to build something. Long enough to teach a girl to doubt every person who loved her. I ended the call. The argument started immediately—it always did.