I held my breath. Mark had brushed off my concerns for weeks, calling it sleepwalking or just a grieving kid feeling out of place. But sleepwalkers don't gently test locked handles. The shadow disappeared. Footsteps retreated down the hall.

I always knew moving into a historic three-story house would come with "character," but I didn’t realize that character would include my eighteen-year-old stepson, Leo, turning the roof into his personal sanctuary.

The attic was off-limits. That was the one rule Lily had insisted on when she married Mark. Not because she had anything to hide—but because the space held the last physical pieces of her first marriage: photo albums, her late husband’s Navy uniform, letters she hadn’t read in a decade.

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