Chapter 4 - The Voice from the Past
Chloe bolted down the hallway toward the kitchen, her bare feet slapping sharply against the linoleum floor, completely ignoring Tiffany’s desperate hiss to stay back. She rounded the corner and found her father gripping the edge of the kitchen island, his knuckles stark white and his chest heaving as if he had just run a marathon.
"Dad? What is it? Who was on the phone?" Chloe asked, reaching out to touch his arm.
Mark didn't answer immediately. His eyes were fixed on the small digital screen of the landline phone, where the caller ID displayed a string of numbers that should have been impossible. It read Out of Area, but the extension number listed underneath belonged to a local landline that had been disconnected for over six months.
"They hung up," Mark finally whispered, his voice trembling uncontrollably. "Or the line went dead."
Tiffany appeared in the doorway, her arms crossed defensively over her blue cardigan, her face etched with calculated annoyance.
"It was probably just a telemarketer or a wrong number, Mark," Tiffany said, stepping into the kitchen and trying to wedge herself between father and daughter. "People use spoofing apps all the time. Let’s just sit down, throw that ridiculous paper away, and have a normal evening."
"It wasn't a telemarketer," Mark said, turning slowly to face his wife. His eyes were bloodshot and hardened with a terrifying new clarity. "The person on the other end didn't try to sell me anything. They just played an old voicemail recording. A voicemail from Sarah’s personal cell phone."
Chloe’s breath caught in her throat. "What did it say?"
Mark swallowed hard, running a trembling hand through his short brown hair. "It was the message she left me the day before she went into the hospital. The one where she said she was scared of what Tiffany was planning to do with her medical directives."
Tiffany’s face went completely bloodless. For a split second, her composure vanished entirely, replaced by a look of sheer, unadulterated panic before she forced a harsh, defensive laugh.
"You're both losing your minds," Tiffany snapped, her voice rising in hysteria. "Grief is making you hear things that aren't there. Sarah has been gone for three weeks! Are you seriously going to let a dead woman’s ghost and a rebellious teenager destroy everything we’ve built?"
"She wasn't just a sick woman, Tiffany," Mark said, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper as he stepped toward her. "The autopsy report... you were the one who signed off on the hospice transfer. You were the only one home when she took her final dose of medication."
Tiffany backed up until her spine hit the pantry door, her eyes darting toward the back exit. "I followed the doctor's orders to the letter!"
"There was no doctor's order for that dosage," Mark said, pulling a folded medical bill from his back pocket that he had picked up from the mailbox earlier that morning. "I called the clinic this afternoon. The prescription was written two hours after she passed away."
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As Mark stepped closer to block the back door, a heavy knock echoed loudly from the front of the house, followed by the heavy, authoritative flash of blue and red lights painting the living room windows.
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