THE NOTEBOOK
The next day, Emma was placed in temporary foster care. She showed up with a small backpack, her stuffed rabbit… and a notebook she’d kept hidden under her bed.
That night, a caregiver leafed through it.
And froze.
The drawings seemed harmless—simple pencil sketches from a child—but they lined up with the investigation almost exactly.
Men standing outside the house.
Her father shouting into the phone while her mother wept.
And the last drawing—Emma lying awake in bed, a dark shape moving down the stairs toward the basement.
Police were notified at once.
When Reyes asked Emma about it, she pulled her toy in close.
“I heard footsteps,” she whispered. “They were heavy. I thought it was Dad… but he was already in bed.”
“Did you see the person?”
“Only their shadow.”
“Before your parents went to sleep?”
“Yes.”
That shifted everything.
The intruder had been in the house earlier that evening.
Someone either knew the home well—or had been let inside.
