Chapter 7 - The Box in the Attic
The reality of Agent Harrison’s words hung over the house like a executioner's axe waiting to fall.
If Miller was escalating toward a final confrontation, we couldn't just sit passively inside my parents' suburban home waiting for him to strike.
I walked back into the living room and stared at the empty cardboard boxes that we had hauled down from the attic the night before.
We had only examined the loose photographs and the primary family albums, but there were still three sealed storage bins up in the rafters.
“David, we need to go back up into the attic right now,” I said, turning to my fiancé with a sudden, desperate resolve.
“My dad keeps every single piece of paper, tax return, and old calendar my family ever owned up there in those plastic tubs.”
“If Miller was stalking us that closely, there has to be a physical paper trail of how he knew where we moved every single time.”
David nodded immediately, grabbing a heavy flashlight from the kitchen drawer while my father pulled down the folding wooden attic stairs.
The three of us climbed up into the cold, dry air of the attic, our breath fogging in the dim light of the single hanging bulb.
We dragged heavy plastic storage tubs away from the insulation rolls, blowing off thick layers of gray dust that made us cough.
We opened a bin labeled COLUMBUS OHIO - 2008 TO 2012 and began digging through stacks of old utility bills, school report cards, and Christmas cards.
Ten minutes into the search, my father pulled out a thick leather-bound desk calendar from the year 2010.
“Look at this,” my dad frowned, flipping through the yellowed pages of his old daily work schedule.
“This was the year my engineering firm transferred me from Columbus to our branch office here in Denver.”
He pointed to a handwritten note scribbled in red ink on the square marked October 12th, 2010.
The note read: Call G. Miller - Apex Relocation Services - Quote for moving van and packing crew.
The attic went completely silent except for the low hum of the wind blowing against the roof shingles above our heads.
“Dad,” I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“Did you hire Gregory Miller to move our furniture from Ohio to Colorado?”
My father looked pale and sick as he stared down at his own handwriting from fourteen years ago.
“I didn't know who he was, Sarah,” my dad stammered, his voice breaking with profound, agonizing parental guilt.
“He posted an advertisement on the community bulletin board at our church in Columbus offering discounted long-distance moving rates for families.”
“He came into our house, packed our dishes, loaded your bedroom furniture into his truck, and drove it all the way to Denver.”
David snatched the old calendar from my father's hands, scanning the notes written in the weeks following our move to Colorado.
“He didn't just move your furniture, Arthur,” David said, his voice vibrating with a terrifying realization.
“Look at the entry for November 3rd, 2010... you hired him to do the landscaping and fence repairs on this very house.”
I grabbed the flashlight and shone the beam into the dark, unfinished eaves of the attic, looking at the exposed wooden floorboards.
If Miller had spent weeks working inside this house as a hired handyman fourteen years ago, he knew every inch of our home.
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He knew the layout of the bedrooms, the location of the breaker box, and the architectural weaknesses of the doors and windows.
He had literally built the fence that was supposed to keep my family safe from the outside world.
