Emma moved into her late father, Richard’s, house after a ten-year estrangement during which they barely spoke. She felt an ache, not grief, for the relationship that never existed between them, surrounded by boxes and the house he left to her. Richard also left a small envelope with his handwriting on it containing a cryptic, unfinished note: “And the most important thing you need to know is…”. He had died without finishing his last sentence, leaving Emma no clue as to the meaning. Emma wondered why he left the house to her, the daughter he barely knew, since he had always kept everyone at arm’s length, and she tried to figure out who he really was.
The neighbor, Jean, soon visited and praised Richard as “a wonderful man” and a kind, helpful person, which confused Emma deeply, as it sharply contradicted her own memory of her cold father. Emma initially dismissed Jean’s words, thinking she must be mistaken. Later that night, as Emma finally started to fall asleep on the old couch, she was jolted awake by a faint, unsettling noise coming from somewhere above her. The sound was a soft rustle, like something moving in the ceiling of the attic. She muttered to herself that she hoped it was not rats. The next day, she discovered an open box of cereal in the kitchen with a hand-written note that simply read, “For Tommy,” sparking her immediate curiosity.
A loud thud from the attic later drove Emma upstairs. She scanned the dusty space and noticed tiny, fresh cereal crumbs scattered near a rug, confirming that something was up there, but it was not a mouse. She then spotted a faint seam running through the wooden wall, clearly suggesting a cleverly hidden door. Emma finally called her Mom to seek answers about her father’s life. Mom admitted that Richard had secretly collected all of Emma’s photos, but he explained that he didn’t know how to be a father because he grew up without one himself. Mom gently suggested that Richard loved in “quiet, complicated ways,” a statement Emma struggled to fully accept at that moment.
The strange noises continued daily, and the traps Emma set caught nothing. She later ran into Jean, the neighbor, who asked her to check her security cameras. Jean mentioned seeing “a light in your attic” on her video feed, which Emma knew was impossible as the space had no lamp. Jean’s odd comment instantly fueled Emma’s growing paranoia. Emma drove straight to a tech store and bought a set of small, hidden security cameras. She carefully spent half the evening setting them up in the attic, connecting the feed to her laptop, determined to finally uncover the unsettling truth behind the persistent noises and the mysterious light that had haunted her first few nights.
The next night, a loud crash jolted Emma awake. She quickly grabbed her laptop and opened the live camera feed, her hands shaking nervously. The camera’s infrared light clearly caught the unmistakable figure of a young woman moving carefully across the dark attic floor. Emma watched the woman approach the seam in the wall—the hidden door—and it swung open, with a faint glow spilling from the secret room inside. Emma slammed the laptop shut and rushed upstairs. By the time she reached the attic, the door was closed. She shouted that she had the person on video and would call the police if they didn’t come out immediately.
A lock clicked, and the hidden door slowly opened, revealing the young woman clutching a sleepy small boy. The woman confirmed the boy was “Tommy” and told Emma that they “live here.” She explained that Emma’s father, Richard, found them with “nowhere to go” and secretly let them stay, telling them to remain safely hidden until Emma arrived and found “a letter.” Richard never finished the note, but he had confessed to the woman that he was a bad father who wanted to do something right before he died. Emma stared at the boy in the woman’s arms and quietly decided, “It’s more yours than mine,” offering them a permanent place to stay in the house.
