Page 128 of Barinov

My chest tightens. “It feels wrong to be here without her.”

“I know,” Lex says, reaching for my hand and interlocking our fingers.

We follow Tex up the stairs to the house. Knox, Sabine, and Roman following closely behind. Roman eases the door shut as we all step inside.

The house looks untouched. White shiplap walls rise toward vaulted ceilings, clean against the dark wooden beams. Light spills in from the wall of windows overlooking the lake and turns the marble countertops in the open kitchen into slabs of liquid silver.

It’s painfully beautiful. The kind of place you’d frame in a magazine spread and title Fresh Start.

A stone fireplace anchors the living room, its mantle lined with framed photographs of a little girl with steel eyes, onyx curls, and too-big smiles. Bella at three with frosting on her cheeks. Another one around five, holding a sparkler on the dock with Henry. Her asleep on Elise’s chest as a baby. Dust has gathered at the edges of the frames and softened the glass like a memory left too long in the sun.

In the center of the room proudly sits a pink dollhouse. My stomach knots when I notice an easel standing in silence next to it. A half-used palette rests on the tray, dried streaks of blush and aqua still clinging to the wood. The canvas lying on it is blank. Patiently waiting for me to create Luca’s next horrific masterpiece.

The television flickers on in the corner, the sudden harsh light fracturing the space.

“Uncle Jack, swing me higher!” A little Bella, maybe three or four, squeals from a swing set in the backyard.

“What the hell?” Lex grits, inching closer to the screen.

“Okay, Sugar Bear,” the sick bastard laughs as he carefully pushes Bella from behind, grinning wider each time his hand touches her.

Her giggles echo off of the walls as the video fades to black. “Nobody” by Dylan Scott replaces her soft, little voice as images of her and Luca begin to fill the screen. His idea of some sort of sick inside joke.

“That fucker,” Lex roars. “Using her favorite song for this shit.”

Photo after photo, once looking so innocent, now a piercing stab to my heart.

Bella on his shoulders, walking into Razorback Stadium in her maroon and white cheerleading outfit, her long hair tied up in a glittery bow. Her hugging his neck and kissing his cheek at her seventh birthday. Bella nearly ten, asleep on his lap on the dock overlooking this same lake. His hand way too low on the small of her back. The two of them reunited in New York this past year. Her smile larger than life because she had finally gotten another family member back.

My stomach rolls.

Roman loses it when an image of Luca holding Bella as a baby in front of the fireplace pops up.

“I’ll kill him for taking my daughter,” he barks, fists curling at his side. “Twice.”

A few more sickening minutes of memory lane pass before the slideshow finally comes to an end. The screen pauses on one image of a young Bella in this living room. She’s kneeling on the floor next to Luca as he assembles the pink dollhouse. She’s smiling up at him while placing stickers all over his forearm.

“Welcome, boys. To the most haunted house in all the land,” Luca’s voice flows through the speakers. “Even though it probably looks rather grand.”

He lets out a soft chuckle.

“I always despised these polished beams and quiet lies,

All dressed up in pretty, bright blue skies.

The mother’s death was a mercy, how it moved things along.

But I couldn’t leave Izzy where she didn’t—”

“Enough with the poems, Luca!” Lex cuts in from beside me, seething at the screen.

“Ahh, Lexie,” Luca laughs. “Where’s your sense of fun?”

“What do you want?” Lex grits.

“What I want,” Luca’s deep voice snaps, the sound bouncing off the walls. “Is for you to sit down, shut up, and let me continue.”

Roman grabs Lex by the shoulder before he can lunge at the screen.