The Empty Vials

Unmailed postcards. A stack of them, the cardstock crisp and the ink unfaded, as if they’d been written yesterday. Florence was a fantasy. Italy was a prop. Every time Elena had spoken about the art galleries and the sunlight on the Arno, she had been reciting a script written by Margaret.

Sarah dropped the postcards. They fanned out across the dusty floorboards, a mockery of a life that never existed.

She stood up too fast. The movement kicked up a thick cloud of forty-year-old dust, gray and heavy with the scent of decay. The air in the attic was stagnant, the summer heat trapping the filth in her throat.

Her chest tightened. A familiar, sharp wheeze rattled in her lungs.

Sarah clawed at the front of her cardigan. The asthma she hadn’t suffered from since high school was back, triggered by the hoard and the crushing realization of the family lie. She needed her inhaler.

She stumbled toward the back of the attic, where Margaret had stored Elena’s childhood bedroom furniture. A white-painted closet stood in the shadows, its door hanging off one hinge.

Sarah yanked the closet door open. It shrieked against the floor. She scrambled through the pockets of old winter coats, her fingers searching for the small plastic canister she used to keep for emergencies.

Her vision blurred. The edges of the room began to pulse with a dark, rhythmic haze.

She reached into the far corner of the bottom shelf, her hand striking something heavy and rectangular. Not an inhaler. It was a medical textbook—*Principles of Neural Science*.

She grabbed it, intending to toss it aside, but the weight was wrong. The cover felt hollow.

Sarah’s fingers found a seam in the pages. She pulled. The entire center of the book had been carved out, a secret compartment hidden behind a facade of higher learning.

She forgot to breathe.

Inside the hollowed-out book, a cluster of amber glass caught the dim light from the dormer window. Sarah reached inside, her fingertips brushing against the cool, smooth surfaces.

She pulled one out. Then another.

They weren't vitamins. They weren't supplements.

The book was filled with empty amber vials. Antipsychotics. Prescribed to E. Vance. Dated during the Florence year.