CHAPTER FOUR
As Jenna guided the car along the familiar streets of Trentville, Piper sat in perfect stillness beside her. “You okay?” Jenna asked, breaking a silence that had stretched since they’d left the hospital.
Piper turned from the window, her green eyes—identical to Jenna’s own—filled with wonder. “It’s like... stepping into a dream I’ve had over and over, but never fully remembered when I woke up.”
They rounded the final corner onto Sycamore Lane, and their childhood home came into view—the two-story craftsman with blue paint slightly faded, the white trim freshly touched up. Jenna pulled into the driveway, put the car in park, and cut the engine.
“We’re home,” she said, the words catching in her throat. She’d tried to prepare Piper for the changes over these long years, but she knew that the homecoming must still have shocks in store.
Piper didn’t move immediately. She sat examining the house with the intensity of someone committing every detail to memory, or perhaps comparing it to some half-forgotten image from the past.
“Mom’s expecting us,” Jenna added gently. “She’s been cleaning for days.”
“That sounds like Mom,” Piper responded with a slight smile. “But I’m still not used to the idea that Dad isn’t here.”
They emerged from the car into the crisp September air.
Piper moved cautiously, her steps uncertain as if she didn’t quite trust the ground beneath her feet.
The hospital had pronounced her physically healthy, if underweight, but she still carried herself with the care of someone who had been ill for a long time.
As they started up the concrete path toward the house, Piper stopped suddenly, her attention caught by the flourishing garden beds that flanked the walkway.
“The flowers,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “They’re beautiful.”
Late-blooming asters in deep purple and lavender nodded in the gentle breeze, interspersed with the fiery oranges and yellows of marigolds and black-eyed Susans. The plants stood tall and vibrant, not a weed to be seen among them.
“Mom started gardening again a few months ago,” Jenna explained. “She hadn’t touched it for years after you disappeared, and then Dad died... but lately, she’s been out here almost every day.”
Piper knelt beside a cluster of sedum with star-shaped pink blooms. “I remember these. They bloom in the fall. Mom always said they were like nature’s last smile before winter.” She looked up and added, “We could even grow some vegetables here.”
Before Jenna could respond, the front door flew open. Their mother stood in the doorway, gripping the frame as if to steady herself. She wore a simple blue dress, her silver-streaked hair pulled back in a neat bun. For a moment, no one moved.
“Piper,” Mom breathed.
Piper rose slowly from beside the flowers, “Mom.”
The single word seemed to break the spell.
Mom rushed down the steps with a speed Jenna hadn’t seen from her in years.
She wrapped her arms around Piper, holding her as if afraid she might vanish again.
Piper stiffened momentarily, then melted into the embrace, her face pressed against her mother’s shoulder.
Jenna hung back, blinking rapidly against the burn of tears. The scene—a reunion she had imagined countless times over twenty years—felt both surreal and achingly ordinary. A mother and daughter embracing on a sunlit lawn, as if separated for days rather than decades.
Mom pulled back to cup Piper’s face between her palms, studying her with hungry eyes. “Let me look at you,” she said, her voice trembling. “My baby is home again.”
She looped her arm through Piper’s and led her up the steps, Jenna following behind.
The familiar creak of the screen door, the scent of lemon polish and cinnamon that had always defined home—Jenna watched as each sensory detail registered on Piper’s face, triggering micro-expressions of recognition and remembrance.
They stepped into the entryway, and Piper’s gaze swept over the living room, taking in the worn sofa where they had watched Saturday morning cartoons, the stone fireplace where their father had hung Christmas stockings, the oak bookshelf filled with photo albums and worn paperbacks.
“It feels smaller,” Piper said.
Mom laughed softly. “That’s what Jenna always says.”
Piper moved to the mantelpiece, where family photos stood in simple frames. She stopped at one of their father, his arm slung around a teenage Jenna at her high school graduation.
“It’s strange that Dad isn’t here,” she said. “In my mind, he’s still the way he was when I was sixteen. Strong, always smiling.”
Jenna felt a pang at the realization. For her, their father had aged, his hair graying, his body gradually betraying him as cancer took its toll.
But in Piper’s mind, Greg Graves would forever be the vital, middle-aged man who had taught them to fish, who had built the tire swing in the backyard, who had never given up hope that his missing daughter would one day come home.
Piper blinked back tears. “I wish I could have said goodbye.”
Mom squeezed her hand. “He knew, somehow, that you were still out there. It gave him peace, even at the end.”
They moved through the house, a silent procession through the geography of shared memory. In the kitchen, Piper paused by the round oak table.
“This is where we did our homework,” she said. “You used to help me with math.”
“And you helped me with English,” Jenna replied, memories flooding back. “You always had a way with words.”
“It’s strange,” Piper said. “For so long, I couldn’t remember anything before... before I became Emma. But now it’s like someone turned a key, and all these memories are spilling out.”
They continued through the dining room, rarely used except for holidays, and into the small den where their father had watched baseball games, shouting at the TV as if the players could hear him.
Each room unlocked more memories for Piper, her words coming faster now, tumbling over each other like water released from a dam.
“And the stairs,” she said as they approached the staircase leading to the second floor. “We used to slide down the banister when Mom wasn’t looking.”
“I knew perfectly well what you two were doing,” Mom said with a hint of her old sternness. “I just pretended not to see.”
Upstairs, the hallway was lined with more photos—Jenna and Piper as toddlers in matching overalls, as gap-toothed eight-year-olds holding fishing poles, as teenagers with braces and self-conscious smiles. Piper moved slowly past each one, as if assembling pieces of a scattered puzzle.
At the end of the hall stood a closed door. Piper stopped before it, her hand hovering over the knob.
“Your room,” Mom said softly. “I’ve kept it... mostly the same.”
Piper took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
The bedroom beyond was frozen in time—twin beds with matching quilts, walls painted a soft lavender, posters of bands long disbanded still hanging where they had been taped twenty years ago.
A bookshelf held well-thumbed paperbacks, their spines cracked and faded.
On the dresser sat a collection of small glass animals, positioned exactly as Piper had left them.
“Oh,” Piper breathed, stepping inside. Her fingers trailed over the surfaces—the dresser, the bedpost, the books—as if to confirm their reality.
Jenna lingered in the doorway, struck by the strangeness of seeing her sister in this preserved shrine to their shared adolescence.
They had been sixteen when Piper vanished—still children in so many ways, on the cusp of becoming women.
The room reflected the people they had been, not who they had become.
Piper sat on the edge of one bed—her bed—and bounced slightly, testing the mattress. “It feels the same,” she said with a small, wondering laugh.
Jenna moved to sit beside her. For a moment, they just sat in silence, shoulders touching, taking in the room that had witnessed their whispered secrets, their childish arguments, their dreams for futures that had unfolded in ways neither could have predicted.
“Piper,” Jenna began, her voice gentle but determined. “There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for twenty years.”
“Why I left?”
“Yes.”
Mom leaned against the doorframe, her eyes fixed on her returned daughter.
Piper’s gaze dropped. “It was because of the darkness.”
“So you were running from the darkness?” Mom asked, her voice strained.
Piper shook her head. “No, Mom. It’s hard to remember exactly—but I think I was trying to take it away. The darkness. To protect you from it. From me.” Her voice broke on the final word. “I guess I thought if I left, if I went far away, the darkness would follow me and leave all of you safe.”
Jenna felt a chill. “You thought you were protecting us by disappearing?”
“I think so. I guess I thought I might hurt all of you … somehow.”
Jenna reached for her sister’s hand. “Piper, I hope you know now that isn’t true. You’re not a danger to us. Those communications you have—they can be frightening, but they don’t make you harmful.”
Uncertainty lingered in Piper’s eyes. “I want to believe that. But sometimes I still feel it—the darkness, waiting. And the voices still find me, no matter where I go.”
Jenna ached to tell Piper that she understood, that she experienced visitations in her lucid dreams. But she hesitated. Piper was still finding her footing in a world that had continued without her for twenty years; adding the revelation of Jenna’s parallel gift might be too much, too soon.
Before Jenna could formulate a response, Piper stiffened, her grip on Jenna’s hand suddenly painful. Her eyes widened, focusing on something beyond the physical confines of the bedroom.
“Piper?” Mom stepped forward, alarmed. “What is it?”
Piper’s breathing grew shallow, her skin paling to an ashen hue. She swayed slightly where she sat, and Jenna put an arm around her shoulders to steady her.
“Someone’s here,” Piper whispered. “Trying to tell me something.”
“What are they saying?” Jenna asked quietly. Mom stood as if frozen in the doorway.
Piper’s eyes remained unfocused, her body rigid. “Red is for rage,” she said, her voice changed somehow, flatter and more distant. “Red is for rage.”
The phrase sent a shiver through Jenna. There was something ominous in the words, something that resonated with her sheriff’s instincts. But before she could ask Piper to explain, to elaborate on what the message might mean, her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Reluctantly, Jenna released Piper’s hand and checked the caller ID. Jake. She hesitated, torn between her duty as sheriff and her concern for her sister.
“I should take this,” she said apologetically. “Jake wouldn’t call unless it was important.”
Mom nodded, moving to take Jenna’s place beside Piper, who was blinking rapidly as if returning from a trance.
Jenna stepped into the hallway and answered. “Jake, what’s up?”
“Hey, Jenna.” Jake’s voice came through clear, if somber. “I hope Piper’s homecoming was a good one for everyone.”
“It has been,” Jenna confirmed, keeping her voice low. “We’re just... catching up.”
“That’s good. I hate to pull you away, but...” He paused, and Jenna could hear the reluctance in his voice. “We’ve got another murder, and it’s a strange one.”
Jenna closed her eyes briefly, already anticipating the end of this family reunion. “How strange?”
“Very … or at least it would be for anywhere else.” He hesitated, then continued, “I can send you photos but at some point we’ll need to go over it together, and I’d rather tell you in person.”
“Where are you now?”
“About to head back to the office.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Jenna told him.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” she promised, ending the call.
She returned to the bedroom, where Piper seemed more composed, though still pale. “Are you okay?” Jenna asked.
“I am now,” Piper replied.
“What did that mean—the words you just said?”
When Piper just looked confused, Jenna added, “You said, ‘Red is for Rage.’”
“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”
“I have to go,” Jenna explained. “There’s been an incident that needs my attention.”
“A murder,” Piper said softly.
Jenna nodded, unsurprised that Piper had intuited the nature of the call. "I'm sorry to leave like this. You're sure you'll be okay?"
“We’ll be just fine,” Mom assured her. “I’ve made Piper’s favorite soup—at least, what used to be her favorite. And there’s so much more to talk about.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Jenna promised, bending to kiss Piper’s forehead. “And then maybe we can talk more about what you just experienced? About what ‘red is for rage’ might mean?”
Piper nodded, though a shadow crossed her face. “Be careful, Jenna.”
She squeezed her sister’s shoulder one last time, then headed downstairs and out to her car.
As Jenna drove toward the office, her mind wrestled with the strange coincidence: Piper’s cryptic message—”Red is for rage”—delivered just before Jake’s call about a murder.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that the two were connected, that Piper had somehow sensed this violence before Jake’s call had come through.