Chapter 4 - What Emily Called the Snake
Emily woke shortly after sunrise.
For a few seconds she didn’t know where she was.
White ceiling.
Hospital curtains.
A machine quietly beeping somewhere nearby.
Then she felt soft fabric beneath her hand.
Rabbit.
She pulled him close.
Her mother slept in the chair beside the bed.
Emily stared at her.
For years she had been told Mommy was gone.
Sometimes Thomas said Sarah had abandoned them.
Sometimes he said she was dead.
Whenever Emily asked why she could hear noises beneath the kitchen, he became angry.
Eventually she stopped asking.
But she never stopped wondering.
Now Sarah was sitting three feet away.
Real.
Alive.
Emily reached out.
“Mommy?”
Sarah woke immediately.
“I’m here.”
Emily’s chin trembled.
“You’re not going away?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
Sarah moved carefully beside her daughter.
“I promise I’m going to do everything I can to stay with you.”
Emily thought about that.
Children understood broken promises better than adults realized.
Finally she nodded.
Sarah touched Rabbit’s torn ear.
“You still have him.”
Emily hugged the toy.
“You gave him to me.”
Sarah smiled.
“I did.”
Emily didn’t know that Rabbit contained another secret.
Years earlier, Sarah had opened a seam along the stuffed animal’s back.
Inside she had hidden a photograph.
One photograph from before Thomas.
Sarah at sixteen.
Her mother Linda beside her.
Her younger brother Jason.
A normal summer afternoon.
A picnic table.
Three people laughing into the camera.
Sarah had hidden it inside Rabbit because she was terrified Thomas would destroy the last evidence of who she had been.
Emily had carried that evidence around for years without knowing.
That afternoon, after specialists confirmed Emily could leave the hospital, she and Sarah were taken to a protected family-services location.
Thomas remained in custody.
His attorney had already begun arguing that Sarah had lived voluntarily in his home.
Detective Shaw had heard similar claims before.
The physical evidence would tell another story.
Locks installed on the outside of the basement room.
Sarah’s lack of identification.
Recorded statements.
The emergency call.
Emily’s fear response.
Old missing-person records.
The hidden documents.
And the photographs.
Rebecca visited Sarah.
“There’s something else we need to discuss.”
Sarah immediately became nervous.
“What?”
“We found photographs in Thomas’s filing cabinet.”
Sarah’s face changed.
“Women?”
“Yes.”
Sarah looked away.
“You knew?”
“I saw them once.”
“When?”
“Years ago.”
Sarah explained that Thomas kept files inside a locked cabinet. During one of his absences, she had discovered the key.
Inside were photographs.
Some included dates.
Addresses.
Notes.
She had only seconds to look.
“Do you recognize anyone?”
Rebecca placed copies on a table.
Sarah studied them.
The first woman meant nothing.
Neither did the second.
At the fourth photograph, she stopped.
“I saw her.”
Rebecca leaned forward.
“Where?”
“With Thomas.”
“When?”
“Maybe six years ago.”
“Where?”
“Another house.”
Rebecca’s pulse quickened.
During the early years Thomas had moved Sarah among several locations.
One had been a rural farmhouse.
A young woman had been there briefly.
Her name was Rachel.
Sarah never knew her last name.
The photograph was labeled Rachel Monroe.
Rachel Monroe disappeared in 2020.
Her case remained open.
“Was she alive when you saw her?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Sarah closed her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca didn’t push harder.
For the moment, knowing Rachel had been alive after her disappearance changed the case completely.
Meanwhile Emily was meeting her grandmother.
Linda Bennett entered the family-services room slowly.
She had spent the entire drive rehearsing what to say.
Nothing survived the moment she saw Sarah.
Sarah stood.
Linda stopped.
Eleven years vanished.
For one heartbeat Sarah was seventeen again.
Linda whispered, “Baby.”
Sarah ran to her.
They held each other for a long time.
Emily watched from behind a social worker.
Linda eventually looked toward her.
Neither knew what to do.
Emily solved the problem.
“Are you my grandma?”
Linda began crying again.
“Yes.”
Emily looked at Sarah.
Sarah nodded.
Emily walked forward.
Linda crouched.
“Hi, Emily.”
Emily studied her carefully.
Then she held out Rabbit.
“This is Rabbit.”
Linda smiled through tears.
“I remember Rabbit.”
Emily’s eyes widened.
“You do?”
Linda looked at Sarah.
“That bunny belonged to your mom.”
Sarah frowned.
“No, it didn’t.”
Linda touched the toy’s ear.
“Yes, it did.”
Sarah stared.
Then memory returned.
Rabbit had originally belonged to Jason.
He had given it to Sarah shortly before she disappeared because the stuffed animal had become a family joke after one ear was damaged in the washing machine.
Sarah had forgotten.
Linda turned the rabbit over.
A seam along the back looked different.
“Was this repaired?”
Sarah’s breath caught.
She remembered the photograph.
Carefully, she opened the loose stitching.
Inside was the old picture.
Linda covered her mouth.
But another object slid out with it.
A tiny folded piece of paper.
Sarah frowned.
“I didn’t put that there.”
Rebecca Shaw, who happened to be present for the reunion, immediately became alert.
“Don’t unfold it yet.”
Evidence gloves were brought.
Rebecca opened the paper.
It contained one handwritten address.
409 Hollow Creek Road.
Underneath were two words.
RACHEL HERE.
Sarah stared at the writing.
“That’s not mine.”
Rebecca looked at Emily.
“Do you know who wrote this?”
Emily shook her head.
Then Sarah remembered.
Six years earlier, for three days, another woman had been placed in the same rural house.
Rachel.
And for one brief afternoon, Rachel had been alone near Emily’s toys.
The missing woman had hidden a message inside a stuffed rabbit.
A message that had remained undiscovered for six years.
Detective Shaw stood immediately.
“Hollow Creek Road.”
She called her team.
Within fifteen minutes, officers were on their way.
The address belonged to an abandoned farmhouse nearly sixty miles outside Springfield.
And when police arrived, they found evidence that proved Thomas Miller’s secrets stretched far beyond Maplewood Drive.
But they also found something impossible.
The basement door was locked.
And from behind it came a woman’s voice.
“Hello?”
May you like
Rachel Monroe was alive.
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