When I discovered my 10-year-old daughter had been skipping school, I followed her to an abandoned building. What I found there shattered everything I thought I knew about my husband’s death and proved that grief wasn’t the only thing haunting our family.
It’s been 13 months since my husband, Mark, died. Thirteen months of waking up to an empty bed, cooking dinner for two instead of three, and watching our daughter Lily navigate a world without her father.
The doctors said it was a sudden heart attack. He was 36 years old, healthy, and vibrant. One morning he kissed me goodbye, promised he’d be home early to make spaghetti, and then he was just gone.
The worst part wasn’t the funeral or the condolences or even the suffocating silence that followed. It was watching Lily shatter into a thousand pieces I couldn’t put back together.They’d been inseparable. Every night before bed, he’d sit on the edge of her mattress and hum this soft, wordless melody while she drifted off to sleep. He’d tell her stories about brave knights and honest queens, about standing up for what’s right even when it’s hard. For her birthdays, he’d carve these intricate little wooden birds.
After he died, Lily changed. The vibrant, chatty girl who used to tell me every single detail about her day became quiet and distant. She’d come home from school, go straight to her room, and draw.
Her drawings were mostly of an old crumbling building with broken windows, a man standing by a river, his face always turned away, and a bird with one wing bent at an unnatural angle.
“It’s grief,” my sister told me when I showed her. “Give her time.”
Then last Tuesday, my phone rang during my lunch break.
“Mrs. Carter? This is Ms. Rodriguez from Riverside Elementary.”
My heart sped up before my brain even understood why. “Is Lily okay?”
“I’m calling because she’s missed three days of school this week, and we haven’t received any absence notes.”
The sandwich I’d been eating turned to sawdust in my mouth. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Lily hasn’t been in class since Monday.”
“There must be some mistake.”
There was a pause. “Mrs. Carter, I’ve been marking her absent. Are you sure?”
I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
That afternoon, I waited on the couch. When Lily walked through the front door at 3:30 p.m., I tried to keep my voice casual.
“Hey, sweetheart. How was school today?”
She froze in the doorway. Just for a second, but I saw it. The way her shoulders tensed, the way her grip tightened on her backpack strap.
“It was fine.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We did multiplication tables in math.”
“Yeah? That sounds fun.”
“Mm-hmm.” She started toward the stairs. “I have homework.”
“Lily?”
She turned, and I saw fear and guilt in her face.
“Nothing. I love you.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
She disappeared up the stairs, and I sat there staring at the space where she’d been, my hands shaking.
Where had my daughter been going for three days? The possibilities that flooded my mind were every parent’s nightmare.
The next morning, everything happened exactly as it always did. I made breakfast. Lily ate her cereal. She packed her lunch, grabbed her backpack, and kissed my cheek.
“Have a good day, baby.”
“You too, Mom.”
She left at 8:00 a.m. sharp, and I waited exactly three minutes before I grabbed my jacket and followed.
I stayed half a block behind her, ducking behind parked cars like some character in a bad spy movie. She walked her normal route toward school, and for a moment I thought maybe Ms. Rodriguez had made a mistake.
Then, three blocks from Riverside Elementary, Lily took a right turn.
My stomach dropped.
She was heading toward the industrial part of town, where the old factories sat empty and rotting. Lily walked with purpose, like she’d done this before. Like she knew exactly where she was going.
She stopped in front of a chain-link fence covered in rust and “No Trespassing” signs. Beyond it stood the old Fairview Textile Factory, a massive brick building that had been abandoned since before Lily was born. Broken windows gaped like empty eye sockets. Graffiti covered the lower walls. Dead vines crawled up the sides like skeletal fingers.
Everyone said it was haunted.
I watched, frozen, as my daughter squeezed through a gap in the fence and disappeared into the building.
Every instinct I had screamed at me to run in after her, but something made me wait. I needed to understand what was happening before I barged in and scared her into never telling me the truth.
I crossed the street, slipped through the same gap, and stepped into the factory.
The air inside hit me first. Damp and cold, smelling of rust and mold. Weak morning light filtered through the broken windows, creating strange shadows. Every sound echoed — my footsteps on the cracked concrete, the wind whistling through the empty spaces, and somewhere deeper inside, a soft, familiar sound.
Humming.
I froze.
It was the melody Mark used to hum. The one he’d sung to Lily every single night. The tune I hadn’t heard in over a year.
I moved toward the sound, my heart hammering. I turned a corner into what must’ve once been a workspace, and what I saw made the world spin.
Lily sat cross-legged on the floor next to a broken window, her backpack beside her. And across from her, sitting on an overturned crate, was an older man.
He looked to be in his 60s, maybe older. Gray beard, clothes that had seen better days, and eyes that crinkled at the corners as he talked. He was holding something in his hands, showing it to Lily.
“LILY!” I shrieked.
The man jumped to his feet so fast the crate toppled over. Lily’s head whipped around, her eyes going wide.
“Mom!”
I ran to her, grabbed her shoulders, pulled her behind me. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing with my daughter?”