The officer nodded. “I’ll have the team check it immediately.”

They kept us at the Millers’ house until the morning.

The sun rose over the wet suburbs, casting a cold, gray light on the street.

The ambulance had long since taken Eleanor to the county hospital.

Nathan had been driven away in the back of a patrol car.

At eight in the morning, a detective named Harris came to speak with me.

He sat at the Millers’ kitchen table, a hot cup of coffee between his hands.

“Mrs. Vance, we searched the master bedroom and the girl’s room,” he said.

I leaned forward, my hands clenched in my lap.

“What did you find?”

Detective Harris sighed, pulling a plastic evidence bag from his briefcase.

Inside the bag was a thick, old leather journal and several official-looking documents.

“We found these hidden inside a hollowed-out compartment built into the headboard of your daughter’s bed,” he said.

“The headboard?” I whispered.

“Yes. It was professionally done. Your husband used his woodworking tools to create a false back to the wooden panel,” Harris explained. “Inside, he kept his mother’s original medical records from thirty years ago. And his father’s death certificate.”