I watched from the kitchen window. I watched them set up the equipment. I watched them move the sensors over the dirt under the porch. They were whispering, their heads bent together.

Detective Miller walked up to the back door and knocked. I opened it. “Ma’am,” he said. He didn’t look at me directly. “I need you to step away from the house.”

“Why?” I asked. My voice sounded small. “What did you find?”

He looked at me for a long time. “There is a void beneath the slab. It is five feet by three feet. It is rectangular.”

My brain stopped working for a second. I leaned against the doorframe. “That is not possible.”

“We checked the county permits,” he said. His voice was flat. “There has never been a permit filed for concrete work on this property. Ever.”

He took a step closer. “The daughter sold you this house, right? Patrice?”

I nodded. My throat felt like it was full of sand. “Yes. She said her mother moved to Florida for her health.”

Detective Miller let out a long, slow breath. He looked past me into my kitchen, then back at my eyes. “The mother never moved to Florida. Her mail is still being forwarded. It goes to a P.O. box in the city. A box registered to Patrice.”

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. “So?”

He looked at me for a long time. “She told you she was in Florida, but she never left.

She has been collecting her social security checks, and she has been collecting the rent on this house, even after she sold it to you.”

He paused, and the weight of it started to settle into my chest. “Patrice told everyone the house was empty. She told everyone the mother was gone.”

I thought about the night we signed the papers. I thought about how hurried Patrice had been. I remembered the way she kept checking her watch. I remembered the heavy, sweet scent of air freshener she had sprayed in every room before we toured it.

“She told you she was in Florida,” he said, and his voice was cold. “But she wasn’t in Florida. She was under the porch.”

I felt the floor tilt beneath me. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just stood there, looking at the door that led to my living room, the place where I had spent two years of my life.

“She knew,” I whispered. “She knew we would find it eventually.”

Miller didn’t answer. He just turned and walked back toward the officers. They were pulling on gloves now. They were preparing to dig.

I went into the living room and sat on the sofa. I looked at the floorboards, the same ones I had walked over a thousand times. I remembered the times I had sat here and read, the times I had drank coffee, the times I had felt so lucky to own this place.