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My stomach did several somersaults. I clicked the link and opened the comments section for a recent blog post that someone on my listeners’ Facebook group had written.

Dozens of comments greeted me, most debating whether the house fire was the result of a dispute with the Irish mob or a battle with another crime syndicate. Some people were recounting the story they’d heard from their cousins, others pulled up only fragments of stories from online.

Someone had declared it the best of Boston’s lost mob stories. Another called it an urban legend. I closed the page and sat perfectly still for about ten seconds. The comments were talking about my family. I opened the comments again, despite how much I already knew I ought not keep reading. Everyone and their aunt and uncle began relaying conflicting details. Some wrote about my dad being involved in racketeering, while some reported that the fire had been an accident. A select few were debating whether anybody in the house could have survived.

Nobody knew I had. Then I spotted the one comment that held me transfixed to the screen. Someone noted that this was a case worth investigating, as they believed there was “more to the story.” I stared at the words on the screen for what felt like forever.

More…there absolutely is more!

I snapped my laptop shut and gazed at the wall with unseeing eyes. If I was going to find the reason someone had burned down my home, stolen my family, and saved my life, I would have to stop pursuing other people’s forgotten answers and start exploring my own.

***

I drove out toward the edge of Boston, not telling anyone where I was going. Before I took the road toward the old property, I’d already turned back three times.

“Sofia, what the hell are you doing?” I whispered to myself.

I’d been in this house before. It had been abandoned for years, and I knew it the second it came into view. The house seemed way smaller than it used to be, although I knew it must only be that because the last time I saw it, I’d only been eight.

The roof had caved in in several places, most of the windows had been boarded up, and weeds grew all over what was once the front yard. It no longer resembled a home.

I parked in front and didn’t move for several minutes. Some part of me thought that if I stepped over that threshold, I would finally be ready to remember it all.

I opened the car door and walked toward the house. I stood in the front of the entrance, my hand stretched toward the fractured frame before walking through it.

The smell hit me first—damp wood, dirt, and ash filled the air. I pulled my coat tight around me and peered into the dark. I knew this house, even after fifteen years. The hallway, right where I was standing, used to be a very happy and well-known place to me. Now there were no colors at all, just blackened walls and a missing piece of the ceiling.

I walked carefully. Every step I took accompanied another memory rising to the top of my head. I saw a faint image of myself as a young child; I remembered running through this hallway. I could hear my mother’s voice calling me for dinner, see how my father sat on the steps reading a novel to me and explaining a difficult concept that I wasn’t old enough to understand.

And then…another memory. The yelling. I stopped moving.

For a split second I swore I would hear it again. I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, and continued.

The stairs were ahead of me. They were half destroyed, but still climbable. I placed a hand on the wall and slowly walked my way up, the stairs squeaking under the weight. The closet was there…still there.

I stood in the doorway and stared at it. For all of fifteen years, I’d struggled not to look back at what happened…but standing in this room made that impossible.

I looked away, my eyes moving down the hall. I didn’t come here for closure; I came for answers. And I was going to get them.

I entered what used to be my dad’s office. The door had taken some damage from the fire, and all that was left in the room itself was just plaster pieces covered in dust.

I stood in the entryway and stared for a moment, remembering what it was like as a little kid. Dad’s dark mahogany desk had sat by the window, his office was covered in rows of files he never let me look at. And there’d been a door that was open sometimes while I sat at the bottom of the stairs, patiently waiting for him to finish whatever he was doing.

I proceeded toward the center of the wreckage, trying not to breathe in too much plaster and dust. I didn’t know what I was actually looking for, especially after all of the physical evidence the investigators had collected all those years ago. Anything they’d missed had probably deteriorated through the years. I still combed the room toward the base of what would’ve been my dad’s desk.

Suddenly, something beneath the wreckage caught my eye. One section of the floor appeared to be lifted, with a lighter wood grain around the base and edges, different from the surrounding boards.

Crouching down, I swept the dust off the surface and pressed my fingertip on the nearest edge. The plank shifted with a slight squeak, and a tremor ran through me. Nearby, I found a jagged piece of wood that I used to pry the floorboard upward. It resisted my efforts for a moment and then popped free. I sawe a shallow indentation below…and something appeared to be inside.

I put my hand into the dark cavity and pulled up what seemed to be a small leather satchel. It had metal clasps that were badly rusted on either side. Its outside bore burn marks.

Rubbing my hand across the legs of my jeans, I rose to my feet before I opened it, trying to be gentle. I saw a variety of papers, most of which were unreadable with age and smoke damage.

I cautiously pulled out one file after the other, hoping desperately for something that could shed some sort of light onto what had made my dad want to conceal this satchel from us.

And then I found it. It looked like a ledger, a small black one in relatively good condition, though parts of it had been melted from heat exposure. At least, there were some legible pieces.

I slowly began to flip through its fragile pages. I found dates, numbers, account numbers, and names I didn’t recognize. There were a few partial phone numbers next to some of the more readable entries, each badly faded apart from one.