Page 190 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

Now I wasn't so sure.

Seraphina

The dough yielded beneath my palms with quiet obedience, folding over itself again and again as though it understood exactly what I expected from it. Flour coated the dark wood countertop in pale fingerprints, dusting the sleeves of my cardigan while the warm scent of rising yeast mingled with garlic, basil, oregano, and melting butter waiting patiently beside the stove. The cottage felt pleasantly alive in the small ways homes should. The oven hummed softly to itself. The old clock above the pantry ticked with comforting consistency. Somewhere beneath the floorboards the pipes answered with a quiet groan as warm water settled inside them.

There was a strange comfort in making bread. Bread never lied. If you kneaded it correctly, it rose. If you neglected it, it died.

People were rarely that honest.

My fingers continued their steady rhythm: fold, press, turn... fold, press, turn while my thoughts wandered somewhere much farther up the mountain road than my body ever could. Four days. Four days without the familiar growl of Elias's truck climbing the track. Four mornings where I found myself listening for an engine that never came. Four evenings where the clearing remained stubbornly empty.

He was probably buried beneath paperwork or bodies or maybe both.

Detectives survived almost exclusively on burnt coffee, stale vending-machine sandwiches, and the arrogant belief that sleep could always wait until tomorrow. I wondered, not for the first time that afternoon, whether he'd remembered to eat anything resembling real food. Whether Max had started eating properly again after the clinic. Whether Elias was remembering to look after himself even half as well as he looked after everyone else.

The dough sagged beneath my hands.

I folded it again.

It felt oddly symbolic.

"You've folded that side nineteen times."

Gerald's voice drifted lazily across the kitchen from beside the ceramic fruit bowl.

"I counted eighteen."

Frank corrected from the windowsill without taking his eyes off the trees beyond the glass.

"You always count incorrectly after fifteen."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Frank-"

"I said no."

"Are you guys arguing again," I sighed quietly.

Their arguments usually amused me. Today they sounded... far away. Almost muffled like someone had stuffed cotton into the walls of the cottage.

My hands stopped, not intentionally. Simply...

Stopped.

Something had changed not outside but inside. The silence had shifted.

There are different kinds of silence.

Morning silence hums gently beneath birdsong. Slow silence feels thick and sleepy. Grief silence sits in the corners of a room long after everyone has gone home.

This wasn't any of those.

This silence listened. It pressed gently against the windows. It stood in the hallway. It waited. I slowly lifted my head, every tiny muscle in my shoulders tightening without permission.