Chapter 14 - The Ghost of Crestview DriveThree days before opening statements, Detective Cole accompanied my mother and me back to 1402 Crestview Drive to collect our personal belongings before the federal receiver auctioned off the estate.
The grand Mediterranean-style home looked eerie and abandoned in the afternoon sun. The white rose hedges were overgrown, and a bright orange federal seizure seal was plastered across the arched front double doors.
Inside, the house felt hollow. The furniture was tagged with inventory stickers, and the walls echoed with our footsteps.
Upstairs in the master bedroom, my mother walked over to the vanity table. The silver jewelry box was gone—logged into police evidence. In its place stood only bare mahogany dust.
"I thought I would miss this place," Teresa murmured, running her hand along the edge of the desk. "I thought my whole life was tied to these walls."
"It was just a building, Mom," I said, packing a small cardboard box with old photo albums and family mementos. "Our lives are outside of it now."
As I reached into the back of my old bedroom closet—the room where I had once kept my childhood books and hidden my early tax files—I noticed a loose strip of baseboard near the corner.
Curious, I knelt down and pulled it back.
Tucked behind the wall was a small, dusty cardboard time capsule I had put together when I was fourteen years old. Inside was a handwritten journal entry, a ticket stub from a high school orchestra concert, and a drawing of a girl standing on a mountain looking at the sunrise.
I held the yellowed paper in my hand, smiling faintly.
The girl who drew that picture had spent ten years believing she had to be perfect to earn her father's love. She had spent her entire youth tiptoeing around a monster disguised as a provider.
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I folded the paper, slipped it into my pocket, and stood up.
"Let's go," I said.
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