Chapter 20 - The Unseen Shadow
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Ten months later, life had settled into a beautiful, harmonious rhythm.
Evelyn Rose was a laughing, dark-haired baby who had just learned to crawl across the polished hardwood floors of their Boulder home. Nora’s restoration firm had just been awarded the prestigious contract to restore the Colorado State Capitol building—the biggest achievement of her career.
Preston Caldwell’s criminal trial had concluded three weeks earlier. He had been convicted on twenty-eight felony counts and sentenced to eighteen years in a maximum-security state penitentiary without the possibility of parole for a decade.
It was a crisp, clear October afternoon. The golden aspen leaves were falling gently across the driveway as Nora pulled her car into the garage after a long day at the Capitol restoration site.
She unbuckled baby Evelyn from her car seat, cradling her comfortably against her hip, and walked toward the front porch.
Sitting near the front door was a small, unlabelled package wrapped in plain brown paper, tied with a simple black string. There was no shipping stamp, no return address, and no courier tag. It had been placed there by hand.
Nora paused, a sudden, subtle chill touching the back of her neck despite the afternoon warmth.
She set Evelyn safely inside her playpen in the living room, locked the front door, and brought the package to the kitchen island.
Using a silver letter opener, Nora carefully sliced through the brown paper.
Inside the box lay a single object resting on a bed of dark velvet: an old, tarnished silver key—the original key to her mother's private desk at the Breckenridge cabin, an item that had been missing for over a year.
Beneath the key rested a printed photograph taken from behind a tree just two hours earlier.
The photograph showed Nora standing in the front yard of her Boulder home, holding baby Evelyn in her arms, laughing under the autumn sun.
On the back of the photograph, written in dark, precise ink that made Nora’s blood run dead cold, were six simple words:
May you like
Eighteen years is not that long.
Nora stared at the photograph, her breath freezing in her lungs, as the floor beneath her feet seemed to tilt once again into the shadows of an unfinished war.
