When I first stepped into Mrs. Halloway’s house, I thought I was only keeping a promise to feed her cat. I had no idea I was about to uncover a story that had been locked away for twenty-six years — a story of fame, heartbreak, and a family ripped apart by silence.
My name is Dori. I’m thirty-eight, married, with two kids, and we’d just moved to Maple Street, a Midwestern neighborhood where neighbors wave from porches and gossip travels faster than the mail. Most people were warm and welcoming, but Mrs. Halloway kept to herself. She lived at the far end of the block in a weathered Victorian, a woman who shuffled to the mailbox in worn slippers and never invited anyone inside. Rumors swirled about losses and old grief; no one really knew her life. We only knew that an orange tabby sat in her window like a lonely sentinel, and sometimes faint piano music drifted from the house at night.
The night everything changed began with flashing lights and an ambulance. I ran outside barefoot and watched EMTs carry Mrs. Halloway out on a stretcher. As they wheeled her past, she gripped my wrist with surprising strength and, through an oxygen mask, whispered, “Please…my cat. Don’t let her starve.” I promised I would, and when the ambulance left, I went inside the silent house. Dust hung in the air and white sheets covered the furniture. The cat, frantic, led me to the pantry and the sink where I left food and water. Then I wandered further in. A baby grand piano sat in the parlor, sheet music scattered across its lid, and above the fireplace hung a black-and-white photo of a glamorous young woman in a sparkling gown singing into a microphone. I froze because I knew that face — the singer my father had played on old jazz records, the one he called “the greatest mystery in music.”
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