Mirrors That Remember

"We like to think we inherit strength from the ones who raised us. But sometimes, what we inherit are questions they never dared answer."

With my gun drawn—Karl's caution be damned, I wasn't going to check upstairs unarmed—I ascended the stairs swiftly, each step amplifying a growing sense of dread that sat in my stomach like a stone. The staircase was grand, sweeping, probably the kind that brides descended on their wedding days whilst everyone gasped at their beauty. Now it just felt like a gauntlet I had to run, each step taking me deeper into this house of secrets.

The idea that something terrible might happen to either Luke or Karl was consuming me, eating away at my professional composure like acid. Karl's recent actions haunted my thoughts—the way he'd snapped that man's neck at Luke's house, whether accidental or intentional I still couldn't say for certain. I hadn’t seen him do it, hadn’t seen the moment when something inside him broke or perhaps revealed itself. But I discovered the aftermath. The body. The blood. And still I'd said nothing, done nothing, become complicit through my silence.

It was clear evidence of his volatile emotional state, rendering him unpredictable and potentially dangerous. And I'd left him out there, alone, to confront Luke Smith, a man who might know about Cody, who might say the wrong thing, who might trigger God knows what response from Karl.

What if Karl killed Luke? What if he made it look justified? What if I became an accessory to murder by standing by and letting it happen? The questions spiralled through my mind, each one darker than the last.

"Thelma," I whispered cautiously, opening the first door on the left with my gun raised, finger resting alongside the trigger guard in textbook position. The room was empty, devoid of any signs of occupancy—a guest room perhaps, or a room kept ready for family members who never visited. The air smelled stale, unused, and I backed out quickly.

My heart raced as I proceeded down the long hallway, checking each room in turn. The corridor seemed to stretch impossibly long, doors marching off into the distance like soldiers standing guard. Each empty room only heightened my anxiety, the silence of the manor amplifying my fears. Where was she? Why wasn't she responding?

The floorboards creaked beneath my feet despite my attempts at stealth, and I was acutely aware of how exposed I was, how many doors remained to check, how easy it would be for someone to step out behind me, to put a bullet in my back before I even knew they were there.

This is how coppers die, I thought. Not in dramatic shootouts, but in quiet hallways, checking rooms one by one, until they check the wrong one.

Finally, I reached the last door at the end of the corridor. A sense of foreboding washed over me like cold water, making my skin prickle and my breath catch. My fingers wrapped around the cold doorknob—brass, probably original to the house, worn smooth by a century of hands opening and closing this door. I could feel my heart pounding against my chest, its rhythm rapid and erratic, loud enough that I was certain anyone on the other side of the door would hear it.

Taking a deep breath to steady my nerves—in through the nose, out through the mouth, like they taught you at the academy—I slowly twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

"Thelma," I whispered again, my voice barely louder than a breath, my gun still raised, still ready.

"Hello, dear," came a croaky, old voice in response, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Relief washed over me for a brief moment at the sound of Thelma's voice, but it was quickly replaced by caution. I stepped into the room, my eyes quickly scanning the surroundings—no threats visible, just an old woman in a bed—though I kept my gun in hand, unwilling to be caught unprepared.

The room itself was a museum piece, frozen in time somewhere around 1950. Heavy curtains framed tall windows, antique furniture crowded every available surface, and the air carried the particular smell of elderly occupation—medication, lavender water, the faint mustiness of rarely-washed bedding.

I quickly moved to the side of the old woman, who lay in a large, four-poster bed that dominated the room, surrounded by a fortress of cushions and pillows that looked like they'd been arranged by someone trying to build defensive fortifications. Her frailty was evident in every line of her face, every prominent bone beneath paper-thin skin. Her presence in the bed spoke of a life lived long and, perhaps, hard—the kind of hardness that came from surviving in Tasmania when surviving meant something different than it did now.

"It's so good to see you. I wasn't sure if you would come," Thelma said, her voice weak yet tinged with a sense of profound relief. Her frail, shaking hand reached out from amongst the pillows to take hold of mine, and I couldn't help but notice the tremble in her grasp—not the fear-tremor of Louise's hands, but the palsy of extreme age, of a body slowly shutting down system by system.

I gazed into her deep eyes and found myself momentarily caught in their depths. They were beautiful still, those eyes, probably stunning in her youth. They held the accumulated wisdom and sorrow of nine decades, shadows of things seen and done and endured that I couldn't begin to imagine.

But my mind raced with the urgency of the situation outside, with Karl and Luke and the shed and all the terrible possibilities spiralling outwards from this moment. I don't have time for this, I thought desperately, even as I couldn't bring myself to pull my hand roughly away from this fragile old woman. "We haven't met," I told Thelma, trying to be as gentle as possible whilst also making clear I needed to leave. "Are you okay?"

"No, dear," Thelma replied slowly, her voice trailing off as if caught in a distant memory, her eyes focusing on something I couldn't see, some ghost from decades past.

"Are you hurt?" I asked, my concern growing despite my urgent need to get back downstairs. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, making everything feel simultaneously too fast and too slow, time stretching and compressing according to no logic I understood.

Thelma's shaking hand moved to pat my neck in an oddly comforting gesture, her fingers cool and papery against my skin. "I can't find the key," she murmured, her words seemingly disconnected from the present situation, floating free in her own private reality.

I fought to keep my frustration in check, mindful of Thelma's fragile state. It was clear she was confused, possibly disoriented, perhaps suffering from dementia or simply the accumulated weight of too many years. The key? What bloody key? But I didn't have time to unpick the mystery of Thelma's consciousness.

"I need to get back to Louise," I told her, gently disengaging her hand as I stood up, feeling like an absolute bastard for abandoning this vulnerable old woman but knowing I had no choice. "I'm going to close the bedroom door again. Don't open it for anyone," I instructed firmly, trying to ensure her safety whilst also containing her, keeping her out of harm's way.

As I walked towards the door, ready to leave the room and return to the chaos unfolding outside—to Karl and Luke and whatever violence might be erupting even now—Thelma's voice suddenly pierced the air with unexpected force.

"Jane, dear, don't go!" she cried out desperately, her voice carrying a strength that seemed impossible from that frail body.

I froze mid-step, a shiver running down my spine like ice water. The name 'Jane' hung in the air, heavy with significance, with implications I didn't want to examine. Slowly, as if moving through honey, I turned back to face Thelma, whose tears were now streaming down her weathered, wrinkled face, cutting channels through powder and age spots. Her expression was one of profound grief and pain, the kind of anguish that transcends time and circumstance.

"Don't leave me again," she sobbed, her voice breaking, shattering into fragments of despair.

A lump formed in my throat as I stood there, momentarily paralysed. Does Thelma think that I'm my grandmother? The realisation dawned on me like a cold sunrise, mingling with a wave of sadness so profound it threatened to buckle my knees.

Jane Lahey. My grandmother. She had recently mentioned something about my parents knowing the Jeffries when they were still alive, but I hadn’t had the time to return to the unfinished conversation. Hadn’t had time to learn the details. And now here was this old woman, mistaking me for her.

What had my grandmother been to Thelma? What secrets had she carried? What connection bound these two old women together across the decades? And why, in her confusion and her grief, did Thelma see Jane's face in mine?

The emotional toll of the case was starting to blur the lines between my professional and personal life in ways I hadn't anticipated, in ways that felt dangerous, like standing too close to a fire until you realised you were already burning. I'd been holding myself together through sheer force of will, compartmentalising the trauma, the guilt, the fear, the exhaustion. But standing here in this room with this ancient woman calling me by my grandmother's name, something inside me cracked.

Before I could respond—before I could untangle the emotional knot tightening in my chest, before I could decide whether to comfort her or correct her or simply flee—the sound of a motorbike roaring to life outside snapped me back to reality with the force of a slap.

"Karl!" I gasped, recognising the urgency of the situation, my body flooding with fresh adrenaline. Luke was escaping. Karl was out there alone. Everything was going wrong, spiralling out of control, and I was up here playing nursemaid whilst the case disintegrated around me.

"I'm sorry. I have to go," I said to Thelma, torn between the need to comfort her—this old woman who'd lost my grandmother, who was losing herself, who was trapped in this bedroom whilst violence played out downstairs—and the need to act on the case, to be a detective, to do my bloody job. With a heavy heart that felt like it might crack my ribs from the inside, I walked briskly out of the room, pulling the door closed behind me with perhaps more force than necessary.

As I hurried down the corridor towards the stairs, the weight of Thelma's mistaken identity pressed heavily on my mind, a burden added to all the others I was already carrying. It was a poignant reminder of the human cost of our investigation, the unseen toll it took on those caught in the crossfire—not just the victims, not just the suspects, but the peripheral people whose lives intersected with violence and disappeared into its wake.

But right now, I had to focus. Karl was out there, possibly in danger, possibly becoming dangerous himself. I needed to be with him, needed to make sure he didn't do something irreversible, something that would destroy us both.

I quickened my pace, my footsteps thundering on the stairs as I descended, no longer caring about stealth, about caution, about anything except getting outside before it was too late. The case was reaching a critical point, racing towards some conclusion I could feel approaching but couldn't quite see.

Every second mattered. Every decision counted. And I was running out of time to make the right ones.

The manor's grandeur, which had seemed impressive when we arrived, now felt oppressive, claustrophobic despite the high ceilings and spacious rooms. The walls seemed to press in, the air grew thick, and I could swear I felt the weight of all those generations of Jeffries watching me, judging me, waiting to see if I would fail the way so many before me must have failed in this house.

Please, I thought, though I wasn't sure what I was praying for or to whom. Please don't let this be the moment everything falls apart.

But deep down, in the part of me that had learned to read the trajectory of disasters, I knew it already had.

The darkness we'd been circling, the secrets we'd been keeping, the lines we'd already crossed—they were all coming home now, demanding payment, refusing to stay buried any longer.