What the House Remembers — Chapter 2

The third handprint was larger than the first two, though not by much — enough that Elena, measuring it against her own palm with hands that would not quite stop shaking, understood with sudden, sick clarity what she was actually counting.

Not separate prints. A sequence. Something growing.

She did not tell her husband that night. She told him the following morning instead, over coffee, in the flattest voice she could manage, and watched him set his cup down very carefully before asking her to show him exactly where.

They found the fourth print together, on the inside of the nursery window, at a height that made neither of them speak for a long time.