Chapter 14 — After

They didn't move back immediately.They spent three weeks at her mother's house and then another week in a rental, and every day David checked in at 14 Ashford Lane — not alone, always in the afternoon, always with his phone on and the front door open. He sat in the kitchen for an hour each visit, listening. He went upstairs on the second visit, and the third, moving through the hallway carefully.The attic door was undisturbed every time.There were no sounds at night. He set up a microphone — his own design, directional, pointed at the attic — and monitored it remotely for two weeks. Nothing. Not the footsteps, not the scratching, not the cadence of almost-words through a wall.On the eighteenth day, he called Nora."I think it's over," he said.She was quiet for a moment. "How sure are you?""Ninety percent.""Good enough."They moved back on a Saturday, the furniture truck arriving on schedule this time. Owen carried boxes with the diligence of someone contributing to a family project. Lily walked through the house slowly, room by room, pausing in each one.She came downstairs last."Okay," she said."Yeah?" Nora said."It's quiet." Lily said it with the finality of a person closing a chapter. "The right kind of quiet."They unpacked through the afternoon. By evening the kitchen was functional, the beds were made, the children's rooms were theirs again — Owen back at the front, Lily in her own room, which she had chosen to return to with the particular stubbornness of someone who refuses to cede ground.Nora sealed the vent in Lily's room anyway. Belt and suspenders.* * *