The fluorescent light on the storage room ceiling flickered continuously, emitting faint crackling sounds like insects chirping in the dead of night. No one said another word. Helen Lloyd bent down to pick up the scraps of paper from the floor, trying to piece them together like a hopeless jigsaw puzzle. But the paper had crumbled to dust, and the handwriting had faded away, leaving nothing readable behind.
Julian Sterling remained standing there, the seashell in his hand gradually warming to his body temperature. Yet he was no longer looking at the shell. He was looking at the cabinet. The rusty metal cabinet that Vivian had used to hide the final fragments of her life in this town.
Something was wrong.
It was not about what was left behind. It was about how those things had been left behind.
