Jane's POV
I'd not set foot in my childhood house in nearly a decade…since I'd fled with the shattered remnants of my past still attached to me. But today, with concern over fresh secrets looming over me, I couldn't stay away any longer. The old house loomed on the outskirts of town like a relic of life I had known, peeling paint and overgrown garden the bitter reminder of lost innocence. I drove my car beneath the gnarled oak tree, branch arms outstretched like skeletal fingers, and inhaled. This was not a journey of nostalgic travel for the sake of it—it was a desperate quest for clues, trinkets that could possibly hold the seeds of what my mother actually meant with her secret messages and rot that had infested my family.
The old house was half-empty, but I could sense the lingering o
