The cake hit the stone patio hard enough to crack the porcelain platter beneath it.

I stood in the center of the living room of 412 Elmcrest Lane.

The house was empty.

Dust motes floated in the pale gray light filtering through the uncovered windows. Where the heavy oak bookcases had stood for twenty years, the walls were pale, marked with rectangular outlines of clean paint. The carpets were dented where sofas, side tables, and recliners had rested for decades.

It smelled like cedar, old dust, and damp plaster.

I walked slowly through the kitchen. The granite island where my mother had made holiday cookies was bare. In the corner by the sliding glass doors, where the cake knife had slipped from my hand just three weeks ago, the stone patio was wet with rain.

I walked down the hallway to the small bedroom at the back—the room that had been mine until I left for college.

They had turned it into a junk room.

Old exercise bikes, broken floor lamps, and cardboard boxes filled with Brooke’s outdated fashion magazines were piled in the closet. But on the baseboard behind the bedroom door, hidden from view, were three pencil marks from twenty years ago:

*Claire – Age 10.*

*Claire – Age 12.*

*Claire – Age 14.*

I knelt down and touched the faint graphite lines with the tip of my index finger.

I remembered the girl who stood against that doorframe, hoping that if she got straight A’s, her mother would look at her the way she looked at Brooke. I remembered the girl who worked two jobs in high school so she wouldn't have to ask her father for lunch money.

“You’re safe now,” I whispered to the empty room. “I came back and got you.”

I stood up, walked into the kitchen, and set my keys on the counter.

Outside, a sleek black SUV pulled into the driveway. It was Greg, the general contractor and inspector, accompanied by a woman named Sarah Jenkins, one of the top luxury real estate agents in Boise.

They walked through the front door, shaking their umbrellas.

“Well, Claire,” Sarah said, looking around the expansive, high-ceilinged foyer with a professional, calculating eye. “The bones of this place are magnificent. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths, mature oaks in the backyard, prime school district.”

“What about the basement damage?” I asked Greg.

“We can shore up that header beam and remediate the mold in less than ten days,” Greg said, tapping his clipboard. “Cost will run about $28,000. With a fresh coat of warm neutral paint throughout, new wide-plank flooring, and staging... this house will show like a million bucks.”

Sarah smiled, pulling out her iPad.

“The inventory in this zip code is historically low right now. If we list at $639,000, we will have a bidding war within seventy-two hours. You could easily close at $660,000 cash.”

I looked through the sliding glass doors toward the patio.

I could have kept it. I could have rented it out for passive income. I could have moved in myself.

But I didn't want their ghosts. I didn't want to live inside the monument of their cruelty.

“Fix it, Greg,” I said. “And list it, Sarah. Sell it to a family with young children who will laugh in that backyard. Sell it to people who know how to love each other.”