A Flash of Winter

The winter wind bit through my thin coat, but the chill radiating from Marcus's words was far deeper. *That room used to be bigger.*

The memory hit me with the violence of a physical blow. Not a vague, floating anxiety this time, but a sharp, hyper-realistic sensory playback.

I wasn't standing on the frozen lawn. I was ten years old. The house was too quiet. The floorboards under my bare feet were freezing. I was walking toward the master suite. There was a puddle of water on the dark wood. Melting snow dripping from heavy winter boots. Boots that belonged inside, but were dripping wet.

The air smelled like wet wool and raw, terrifying adrenaline.

"Ms. Vance?" Marcus's rough voice yanked me back to the present. He was watching me closely, his expression shifting from anger to wary concern.

"I'm fine," I lied automatically. The Vance family reflex. Deny, deflect, manage. "The cold just caught me. You're right about the drainage. Send Julian the estimate for the retaining wall."

I didn't wait for his reply. I turned and walked back up the porch steps, my legs feeling like lead. I locked the front door behind me, leaning against the heavy oak, fighting the urge to tear the watch off my wrist. The green light pulsed, feeding my escalating heart rate straight to Harrison's server.

I needed to slow down. I needed proof that wasn't locked inside my own chemically altered brain.

I pushed away from the door and walked to the library. The room was a monument to the Vance legacy. Floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves lined the walls, filled with legal texts and medical journals. On the bottom shelf, tucked away from the impressive academic volumes, sat a row of heavy, leather-bound photo albums. Mother had been meticulous about documenting our 'perfect' family.

I pulled out the album stamped *1997-1999*. The binding creaked as I laid it flat on the massive reading table.

I flipped past the summer of '97. Vacations in Martha's Vineyard. Arthur looking smug in his law school graduation robes. Harrison looking serious in his white coat. Me, small and pale, usually positioned at the edge of the frame.

I turned the thick pages, scanning the dates Mother always wrote in precise cursive below the photos.

*October 1998. Halloween.* *November 1998. Thanksgiving.* I turned the page, expecting the familiar gloss of a Christmas photo. Our tree was always professionally decorated.

The next page was blank.

I frowned, running my hand over the black construction paper. I could feel the faint, raised impressions where photo corners used to be glued down. Someone had carefully peeled the pictures away.

I turned another page. Blank.

And another. Blank.

Every single page from December 1998 through March 1999 had been stripped clean. The faint, sticky residue of the missing photo corners formed perfect, empty squares across the black paper.

The next photo, several pages later, was dated *April 1999. Easter.* I traced the empty squares. They hadn't just built a wall to hide a physical space. They had built a wall in my mind to hide the memory. And they had purged the house of any evidence that contradicted their narrative.

An entire season had been surgically removed from their family history.