Eleanor refused to sleep that night.
She sat at the kitchen table with the photocopy in front of her.
Thomas sat across from her.
I made tea nobody drank.
Harold stood near the window.
“Tell us every person on that list,” Thomas said.
Eleanor shook her head.
“I don't remember all of them.”
“Then we'll go through your records.”
She looked frightened.
“Why?”
“Because someone had information about your deliveries.”
Harold spoke quietly.
“Maybe it's nothing.”
Thomas turned toward him.
“Dad.”
Harold stopped.
“We can't keep saying that.”
He was right.
Nobody could.
Eleanor brought down her baking notebook.
She opened it to a section near the back.
There were names.
Addresses.
Orders.
Dates.
Amounts.
Thomas compared them with the photocopy.
Several matched.
One didn't.
He circled it.
“Who is this?”
Eleanor frowned.
“I don't know.”
The name appeared beside an address in a neighborhood several miles away.
“You delivered there?”
“No.”
“Then why is it in your records?”
“It isn't.”
I looked at the handwriting.
The entry looked almost identical to Eleanor's.
Almost.
But not quite.
Eleanor leaned closer.
“That's not mine.”
Thomas looked at me.
I noticed something.
The letter “r” was different.
The handwriting had been copied from hers, but whoever had written it didn't know her habits well enough.
“They imitated you,” I said.
Eleanor stared at the page.
“That means someone has seen my notebooks.”
Thomas nodded.
“Or had access to them.”
Harold moved away from the window.
“Who?”
No one answered.
Thomas called Martin.
The contractor answered quickly.
Thomas asked whether anyone besides him had accessed the house.
Martin listed several people.
Insurance inspectors.
Repair workers.
A structural engineer.
A plumber.
Then he mentioned one more person.
“Your mother's delivery guy.”
Eleanor frowned.
“I don't have a delivery guy.”
Martin paused.
“You did during the last month before you left.”
“No.”
Thomas looked at me.
“Mom, think.”
Eleanor shook her head.
“I picked everything up myself.”
Martin described the man.
Middle-aged.
Dark jacket.
White van.
He had claimed to be collecting materials from the house.
Eleanor suddenly stood.
“I remember him.”
Thomas looked up.
“What?”
“He came twice.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I thought he was working for the contractor.”
Martin sounded surprised.
“I never sent anyone.”
The room went silent.
Thomas thanked him and ended the call.
Harold sat down heavily.
“That doesn't prove anything.”
“No,” Thomas said. “But it explains how someone could have entered the house.”
Eleanor wrapped her arms around herself.
“Why would someone pretend to work on our house?”
Thomas didn't answer.
I looked at the photocopy.
Maybe the question wasn't why someone had entered.
Maybe it was what they had been looking for.
The recipe box.
The contractor report.
The list of deliveries.
All three might be connected.
I said, “What did you keep in the recipe box besides the house papers?”
Eleanor thought.
“Photographs.”
“Anything else?”
“My father's letters.”
“From when?”
“Before I married Harold.”
Harold smiled faintly.
“Those letters were terrible.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“You read them.”
“You showed them to me.”
“You weren't supposed to laugh.”
“I wasn't laughing.”
“You were.”
Thomas interrupted.
“What else?”
Eleanor thought again.
“An old bank statement.”
“Why?”
“Because my father had a small business.”
“What kind?”
“Construction.”
Thomas stared at her.
“Construction?”
She nodded.
“What kind of construction?”
“Drainage systems. Foundations. Small commercial projects.”
I looked at Harold.
He seemed to understand the significance before I did.
Thomas asked, “Did your father ever work with Martin?”
“No.”
“Anyone in his company?”
“I don't know.”
Eleanor's face tightened.
“He retired before you were born.”
Thomas leaned back.
“Could the old documents be connected to the house?”
“I don't know.”
She looked toward the notebook.
“Maybe.”
The next morning, we began sorting everything Eleanor had kept.
There were old photographs, handwritten recipes, invoices, tax records, and letters.
Most were ordinary.
Then Thomas found a photograph.
It showed a younger version of Eleanor standing beside her father.
Behind them was a construction site.
He turned it over.
A company name was written on the back.
I recognized the same company name from the photocopy.
Thomas looked at me.
“That's it.”
Eleanor came closer.
“I haven't seen that picture in years.”
“What was your father building?”
She studied the image.
“I think it was a drainage project.”
Thomas's phone rang.
It was the officer from the previous day.
She had an update.
They had found a camera recording from a neighboring property.
Someone had been near Eleanor's parents' house shortly after they moved in with us.
A white van.
The plate was partially visible.
Thomas asked for the number.
The officer gave him the digits she could confirm.
He wrote them down.
Then he stopped.
“That's impossible.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
He showed me the number.
It belonged to a vehicle registered to a local company.
The same company name appeared on the back of Eleanor's old photograph.
Eleanor went pale.
Harold whispered, “No.”
Thomas looked at his mother.
“Mom, what did your father know about that company?”
She shook her head.
“I don't know.”
Then her eyes moved toward the photograph.
A tiny detail caught her attention.
She took it from Thomas.
“There.”
She pointed to a man standing in the background.
A younger man in a work jacket.
Harold leaned closer.
“Who is that?”
Eleanor stared at the photograph.
“I don't know.”
Thomas frowned.
“You're sure?”
She nodded.
“I've never seen him before.”
I looked at the man.
Then at the company name.
Something about his posture seemed familiar.
Not his face.
The way he stood.
The way one hand rested against the side of the van.
I couldn't explain why.
Then Eleanor whispered something that made all of us look at her.
“I've seen him recently.”
Thomas's voice dropped.
“Where?”
She looked toward the front window.
“At the farmers' market.”
“When?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“Did he speak to you?”
Eleanor shook her head.
“No.”
“What did he do?”
“He stood across the street and watched me.”
The kitchen went silent.
Thomas took the photograph from her.
“We're not going to ignore this.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“I don't want this to become something bigger.”
Thomas's expression was firm.
“It already is.”
He placed the photograph beside the photocopy.
The old construction company.
The missing recipe box.
The altered drainage.
The mysterious deliveries.
The man at the market.
And the six months Eleanor and Harold had spent living in our home.
Until that moment, I had believed their stay with us had been an unfortunate consequence of a damaged house.
Now I wondered whether the house had been damaged for a reason.
And if someone had been watching Eleanor before she ever moved into our guest room, then perhaps the suitcase beneath the mattress had never been the strangest thing hidden in our house.
Click here to continue reading: PART 9: The Man From the Photograph Appeared Again, and What He Finally Said About Eleanor’s Father Forced Us to Reconsider Everything We Thought We Knew
The Morning Their Room Was Finally Empty, I Expected Relief—Instead, Something Shifted Beneath the Mattress and Changed Everything
Part 8 of 10
