The rain had not stopped since dawn.
It tapped against the window of the black car like hesitant fingers, as if nature itself wasn't sure it wanted to intrude on a day like this. Elara sat stiffly in the back seat, her hands folded tightly in her lap, knuckles pale from pressure. She hadn't cried. Not at the airport. Not during the drive from the station. Not even now, with the hearse in front of her, Isla's casket just feet away. She watched droplets chase one another down the glass. They looked like they were racing to forget.
She envied them.
The town hadn't changed much in the seven years since she'd left. Same cracked sidewalks. Same weather-beaten signs for the bakery and the library. Same haunting quiet. But as the car turned onto Elmwood Lane, toward the cemetery nestled behind St. Joseph's chapel, Elara felt something deep inside her shift. This was where Isla now belonged. The idea refused to feel real.
The priest's words barely registered as she stood under a shared umbrella with her mother, Margaret. The older woman's face was a cracked porcelain mask, painted calm, but threatening collapse. Her hands trembled, not from grief, but from the medication Elara knew she still took. Sedatives. Antidepressants. She'd always lived in a world half-fogged by drugs and ghosts.
The casket was lowered. Earth hit the lid with a hollow thud. Elara flinched. It was too final, too brutal. It sounded like an ending she wasn't ready to accept.
She remembered Isla's laugh as light, wild, and contagious. A perfect mirror of her own, once. Twins, but not identical. Isla had always been brighter, more magnetic. People naturally gravitated toward her. Elara often felt like the shadow her sister left behind. But it had never mattered before.
Until Isla disappeared, and they found her body in the lake.
After the service, several people approached neighbors, former classmates, and those who had known their family when it was whole. They spoke in hushed voices, eyes full of pity. Elara nodded and smiled politely, but didn't hear a word. Their condolences were wrapped in awkward silences. No one knew what to say when a life ended like Isla's.
"Such a shame," someone whispered behind her. "So young." "I thought she was doing better," said another. "She'd just started painting again."
"Elara," her mother said beside her, a cold hand briefly touching her wrist. "We should go. It's cold."
It wasn't the weather that chilled her.
The house was just as she remembered and completely different. The white paint had yellowed and was peeling in several areas. The once-bright marigolds that Isla had planted beneath the front window were long dead, the soil hard and cracked. The steps creaked louder than before, and the front door stuck.
Inside, it smelled like dust and antiseptic. Faintly of lavender. And something else, something older. Memories, maybe.
"I left your room the way it was," her mother said as she shrugged off her coat. "Figured you wouldn't stay long."
Elara looked at her, surprised. "That's… thoughtful."
Margaret didn't reply. She drifted toward the kitchen, trailing silence behind her. Elara climbed the stairs slowly. Each step groaned like it remembered her weight. Her childhood bedroom was exactly as she'd left it, books on the shelves, faded posters on the wall, even the old scarf she'd draped over her lamp for "ambiance" still hung crookedly. She stood in the doorway for a long time, unsure of what she felt. Nostalgia? Dread? And then her gaze shifted to the door across the hall.
Isla's room.
It was closed.
She crossed the hallway before she could think better of it. Her fingers hesitated on the doorknob. The air felt thicker here as if the walls were holding their breath.
Inside, the room was dim, lit only by the gray light sneaking through the curtains. The bed was made. Her sketchbook was on the desk. Paint tubes were scattered beside it, caps half-twisted. A faint scent of turpentine and roses lingered. Elara stepped inside slowly, each footstep an intrusion.
On the desk sat a mug, mold forming in what remained of the tea. It hadn't been touched in days. She reached for the sketchbook, flipping through the pages. Portraits. Abstracts. Some dark, almost violent in color and shape. Near the end, the drawings became increasingly chaotic. One caught her breath: two girls standing in a forest, one with a face, the other with none.
She closed the book.
Dinner that night was quiet. Margaret picked at her food, elbows on the table, lost in thought. Elara tried to ask about Isla, what she'd been like in the final weeks, but her mother deflected.
"She had her moods," Margaret said. "She was always sensitive."
Elara's fork froze mid-air. "Is that what we're calling it?"
"I don't know what you want me to say," her mother whispered. "She was hurting. You weren't here."
The words hit like a slap. Elara dropped her fork, the clatter loud in the silence.
"I called," she said. "I wrote."
"She didn't need letters. She needed you."
The bitterness in her voice was undeniable. Elara stood, her appetite gone.
"I'm going to bed."
That night, sleep didn't come.
She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, Isla's sketchbook on her chest. Her mind churned, her heart aching. Something didn't make sense. The police said suicide. The body in the lake. No signs of foul play. But Isla hadn't left a note. And she never swam. She hated lakes.
In the silence, the house spoke. Creaks and groans. The sigh of the wind. And something else.
A soft knock.
She sat up, heart pounding. The hallway was empty. But her door was open; she'd closed it earlier.
Hadn't she?
She rose, her bare feet cold against the floor, and stepped into the hall. A faint noise drifted from Isla's room—was it a drawer sliding shut?
She crossed the hall. The door stood ajar.
"Elara…"
She spun. No one was there.
A whisper. Barely audible. Her breath caught.
She stepped into Isla's room, chest tight.
Nothing. Just shadows and memories.
She turned to leave and saw it.
A single page torn from a sketchpad, lying on the floor near the closet.
She picked it up slowly.
It was a drawing of Elara, eyes wide, mouth open in a scream. Behind her stood a shadowy figure with long fingers and hollow eyes.
Below it, scrawled in red ink:
"I tried to tell you."