Super Moving Average 123

The first time Daniel saw the house, it was raining.

Not the kind of rain that falls gently from the sky, washing the streets clean and leaving the world smelling of fresh earth. This was heavier, colder, almost deliberate. It struck the windshield in thick, uneven sheets, blurring the narrow road ahead until the headlights seemed to illuminate nothing but darkness.

He had been driving for nearly four hours when the GPS finally announced that he had arrived.

Daniel looked up.

The house stood at the end of a gravel driveway, surrounded by towering pine trees and an overgrown garden that had long since surrendered to nature. Its windows were dark. Its roof sagged slightly in the middle, and the white paint on its wooden exterior had faded into a sickly gray. A rusted mailbox leaned beside the entrance, its door hanging open like a broken jaw.

He switched off the engine.

For a moment, he simply sat there, listening to the rain patter against the roof of his car.

He hadn't been back in eleven years.

Eleven years since the funeral. Eleven years since he had stood in the doorway of this very house, promising himself he would never return. Eleven years since he had packed a single suitcase, walked down the driveway, and left everything behind without once looking back.

Now, at thirty-two, with a failed marriage, an empty apartment, and a career that had become little more than a collection of meaningless achievements, he had nowhere else to go.

The letter had arrived three weeks earlier.

It was written in his father's unmistakable handwriting, despite the fact that his father had been dead for almost a year.

Daniel,

If you're reading this, then I suppose I've run out of time to tell you what I should have told you a long time ago.

There are things in this house that belong to you. Things you deserve to understand.

Go to the study. Open the bottom drawer of the desk.

And whatever you do, don't let anyone convince you that your mother left willingly.

Daniel had read those words perhaps a hundred times since opening the envelope. Each time, they seemed to become stranger, more impossible to explain.

His mother had left when he was seven.

That was the story he had been told, anyway.

He stepped out of the car, pulled his coat tightly around himself, and approached the front door. The key was waiting beneath the same loose brick where his father had always hidden it.

The lock turned with a reluctant click.

Inside, the air smelled of dust, damp wood, and something faintly metallic.

Daniel stepped into the darkness.

Then, somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked.

He froze.

He was certain he had seen the house standing empty.

He was certain he had locked the car.

And he was absolutely certain that, before entering, he had been alone.

Yet from somewhere above him came a voice, quiet enough to be mistaken for the wind.

"Daniel?"

A pause.

"You're finally home."