The Thing in the Grass

Callum Reid hadn't been invited. That was the first wrong note.

He'd texted Corinne three times about picking up Talia for the weekend, and three times the message had shown one gray checkmark and nothing else. No reply. No excuse. Corinne always had an excuse.

So he drove the forty minutes to the house he used to half-own, parked on the street because the driveway gate was chained, and let himself in through the side yard the way Talia had taught him when she was seven and thought it was a game.

It wasn't a game today.

The thing was set back near the tree line, wire mesh bolted to a wood frame, low enough that a grown man would have to duck. Chicken wire. A hasp and padlock on a plywood door.

And Talia was inside it.

She was sitting with her knees pulled to her chest, and when she saw him she didn't call out. She just went very still, the way a rabbit goes still.

"Hey. Hey, baby, it's Dad." His voice cracked on the second word. He was already running.

The padlock didn't move for his hands, shaking as they were. "Talia. Talia, look at me. Who did this?"

She didn't answer. She looked past him, toward the house, and her whole body flinched.

He turned.

Roland was standing at the kitchen window, dish towel over one shoulder, watching them with an expression Callum would spend a long time trying to name. Not surprise. Not shame.

Calm.

Roland lifted a hand — not a wave, more like a man silencing a room — and mouthed something through the glass Callum couldn't hear.

Then he saw it. Behind Roland's shoulder, on the counter: Corinne's phone, the one with the cracked corner and the sunflower case, sitting in a charging dock.

Corinne never went anywhere without that phone.

So where was Corinne?