The rain in Seattle is different from the rain in Oakhaven.
In the valley, the rain was a cage. It was a vertical iron bar system designed to keep you in and keep the secrets down. Here, the rain is just weather. It washes the streets clean. It waters the window boxes. It taps against the glass of my apartment like a polite guest, not an intruder trying to scratch its way inside.
I sat at my desk, the cursor on my laptop blinking a steady, rhythmic heartbeat.
Chapter 12, I typed. The Recovery.
It wasn’t a crime novel. It wasn’t an exposé on the failures of rural policing or a sensationalist account of the “Sandman Murders.” I had written those articles, and they had run on the front page, and they had done their job. They had purged the infection.
This book was different. It was about memory. It was about how we build castles out of trauma and then forget we hold the keys to the doors.
I took a sip of coffee. It was hot, black, and didn’t taste like fear.
My apartment was quiet. Not the pressurized silence of the Glass House, waiting for a scream, but the comfortable silence of a Sunday morning. I had blinds on the windows now, but they were open. I let the light in. I let the world see me.
A knock came at the door.
Six months ago, that sound would have sent me reaching for a hammer or diving for a phone. Now, I just checked my watch.
“Coming,” I called out.
It was the mail carrier. He smiled, handed me a stack of envelopes, and commented on the weather. A mundane, beautiful interaction.
I sorted through the stack as I walked back to the kitchen. Bill. Magazine. invitation to a gallery opening.
And then, a plain white envelope.
No return address. But the postmark was distinct. A circular stamp, smeared slightly at the edge.
OAKHAVEN, WA.
I stopped.
My heart gave a single, hard thump—a reflex, a muscle memory of old terror. But it didn’t spiral. I didn’t hyperventilate. I didn’t smell cedar and rot.
I ran my thumb over the paper. It wasn’t blue. It wasn’t heavy cardstock. It was just an envelope.
I grabbed a letter opener—a simple steel blade, not a weapon—and slit the top.
There was a single sheet of lined notebook paper inside, and a photograph.
I unfolded the letter first.
The handwriting was neat, precise, but with a certain heaviness to the strokes. Julian’s handwriting.
Elara,
I thought you should know—we knocked it down yesterday. The Glass House. The demolition crew said the foundation was cracked all the way through. Richard really didn’t know how to build on a fault line.
The town council voted to turn the land into a park. No structures. Just trees and open sky. Mrs. Higgins voted against it, of course, but she’s outnumbered these days. Mrs. Gable is awaiting trial, and she’s talking. It turns out a lot of people knew about the boy in the shed. A lot of people are resigning.
I’m officially Sheriff now. Miller took early retirement. He lives in Florida. I hear he hates the humidity.
I went to the cemetery this morning. There’s a marker for Elias now. It has his name. His real date of death. I put a pair of shoes on the grave. Size nine.
I hope you’re writing. I hope you’re sleeping. I hope, when you look in the mirror, you see yourself, not the glass.
Stay in the light, Elara.
—J
I lowered the letter. My eyes were wet, but the tears didn’t fall. They just sat there, shimmering, refracting the light of the room.
Julian had stayed. He had taken the wreckage of his family legacy and decided to build something sturdy on top of it. He was fixing the cracks.
I picked up the photograph.
It wasn’t a picture of the demolition. It wasn’t a picture of the grave.
It was a picture of the town square. The fog had lifted. The sky was a piercing, brilliant blue. In the center of the frame, scaffolding covered the old clock tower. They were repainting it. They were stripping away the gray, peeling paint and revealing the red brick underneath.
People were walking on the sidewalks. Not hurrying, not looking over their shoulders. Just walking.
The Shroud was gone.
I walked over to the wall above my desk.
When I first came back from Oakhaven, this wall had been a collage of trauma. Timelines. Crime scene photos. Post-it notes connecting dates and deaths. It had been my own version of Elias’s shrine, a way to organize the chaos.
Now, it was just a corkboard.
There was a calendar. A recipe for risotto. A ticket stub from a concert.
I took a brass tack. I pinned the photo of Oakhaven right in the center.
It wasn’t evidence. It wasn’t a clue. It was a memory.
“Goodbye, Elias,” I whispered.
I didn’t say it with anger. I didn’t say it with fear. I said it with the quiet sadness of saying farewell to a part of myself that had died in the dark so the rest of me could live in the sun.
The Sandman was dead. The imaginary friend who became a real monster was gone. And the girl who needed him—the girl who invented games to survive the Dragon—she was gone, too.
I wasn’t the Princess anymore. I wasn’t the Ice Queen.
I was just Elara.
My phone buzzed on the desk. A text message.
Sarah: Brunch in 20? The sun is actually out!
I smiled. A real smile. It felt loose and easy on my face, not like a mask I had to glue in place.
I typed back: On my way.
I grabbed my coat. I walked to the door.
I paused for a second, my hand on the knob. Old habits die hard. I did a quick check. Keys. Wallet. Phone.
No gun. No stone in my pocket. No burner phone.
I didn’t need them.
I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. I locked the door behind me, but I didn’t check it three times. One click was enough.
I walked down the stairs and pushed open the heavy front door of the building.
The sunlight hit me like a physical force. It was warm on my face, bright and blinding and beautiful. The air smelled of roasting coffee and sea salt.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the present tense.
Down the street, I saw my friends waiting at the corner. They were waving.
I started to walk toward them.
I didn’t look for shadows in the alleyways. I didn’t check the rooftops for watchers. I didn’t listen for scratching in the walls.
The game was over.
And for the first time in thirty years, I was finally, truly awake.