We Used to Live Here

Chilly air nips at Eve Palmer’s cheeks as she stands at the door of the house she and her girlfriend, Charlie, are renovating to resell. A family of five appears unexpectedly at her doorstep, and the father says he grew up in the house and wants to show it to his children. Eve hesitates because of the late hour, the isolated location, and the absence of a visible vehicle, though the father explains that their car is parked down the road because the driveway is too icy.

Eve struggles between her caution and her tendency to avoid disappointing people. She lets the family wait in the foyer while she tries to call Charlie, relying on her usual habit of letting Charlie deliver difficult refusals. Eve reaches Charlie’s prerecorded voicemail and assumes she is still in town with her phone silenced, leaving Eve to make the decision herself.

The strangers’ presence feeds Eve’s anxious thoughts, which she personifies as Mo, a cymbal-playing monkey toy from her childhood. Eve initially tells the family that Charlie said they cannot tour the house. The father accepts the refusal without argument and gives Eve a business card for Faust’s Photolab, suggesting they arrange a visit another time. As the family walks away, Eve’s guilt over disappointing them wins out, and she calls them back and agrees to a fifteen-minute tour.

Eve watches the family settle into the foyer and is reassured when the father opens the coat closet without looking, supporting his claim that he once lived in the house. He introduces himself as Thomas, his wife as Paige, and the children as Jenny, Newton, and Kai. Eve reflects on the condition of 3709 Heritage Lane, the financial pressure behind buying it, and the possibility that she and Charlie may eventually demolish the house rather than restore it.

Thomas points out features he remembers, including an antler chandelier, the old black-and-white floor beneath the hardwood, crown molding carved by his mother, and symbols left by his sister. Eve tells him the chandelier was not there when she moved in, although Charlie had actually sold it after they found it among the house's clutter; Thomas appears to recognize that Eve is withholding something but does not challenge her. Eve also notices pockmarked scars on Thomas's face and sees him swallow pale orange pills that he presents to Jenny as something spicy and not for children.

Upstairs, Thomas notices that a stained-glass window is not where he remembers it and finds the concealed handle of a dumbwaiter that once ran to the basement. He identifies another room as having belonged to his sister Alison. Later, Eve's dog Shylo becomes rigid and trembles while staring at the basement door. Eve locks the door, then sees a house ant and concludes that the insect explains Shylo's reaction. When Thomas asks to see the basement, Eve refuses by citing tools and broken lights, and Thomas accepts the boundary.

As the family prepares to leave, Thomas starts to ask Eve whether she has noticed anything unusual but is interrupted by a fight between Kai and Newton. The family then realizes Jenny is missing and begins searching the house. Eve sees a pale blue light in the snowy woods that disappears, then follows a commotion upstairs. There the wallpaper covering the dumbwaiter has been torn back and its door is open. Thomas calls into the shaft and receives no answer, concluding that Jenny has probably found a way into the basement.

Thomas and Eve descend into the basement with flashlights while the rest of the family waits upstairs. Thomas says a dramatic search will make Jenny hide longer and has Eve split off to search alone. Eve follows a trail of ants through the basement to a wardrobe where she thinks she sees blinking eyes, but inside she finds only a painting of a chocolate Labrador facing the woods beside a red lantern.

After leaving the room, Eve finds Thomas standing motionless in a hallway with his back to her. He does not respond when she calls his name several times, then suddenly turns and seems startled by her presence. Thomas blames his poor hearing and leads Eve to a narrow passage where he says Jenny is hiding. Although he had earlier told Eve to grab Jenny if she saw her, he now insists they should not try to retrieve her because she will resist and eventually come out on her own.

Thomas calls into the passage and gets no verbal answer. He knocks a familiar pattern on a pipe, and after a delay two faint knocks answer from somewhere beyond the opening. Treating this as confirmation that Jenny is there, Thomas decides they should return upstairs and wait. Eve follows him out but remains uneasy about both his behavior and his refusal to bring Jenny out of the basement.

Back upstairs, Paige challenges Thomas for leaving Jenny in the basement, especially in a stranger's house. Their argument also reveals tension over the family's move to Minnesota. Eve overhears part of the exchange while worrying about Charlie, who is now nearly an hour late in worsening snow. Charlie then arrives carrying beer and wine and explains that the roads are deteriorating. She also confirms that the Faust family's moving truck is parked down by the road.

When Thomas tells Charlie that Eve had not wanted the family there, Eve lies that she had called Charlie earlier to check. Charlie recognizes that Eve used her usual excuse to avoid saying no. In private, Eve tells Charlie that the family's lack of urgency about Jenny feels wrong but withholds the stranger parts of her basement encounter with Thomas. Charlie agrees that if Jenny does not emerge by the end of dinner, she will intervene.

Paige helps prepare the meal while Thomas makes another unsuccessful attempt to coax Jenny out. During dinner, the family discusses their move to Minnesota, Thomas's new photography teaching job, and religion. Paige then questions Eve about her relationship with Charlie and whether Eve's religious parents accept it. Charlie pushes back, and Thomas eventually tells Paige to stop. The worsening storm makes the lights flicker and prompts concern about the roads.

Jenny finally returns from the basement, dirty and apologetic, and Thomas and Paige scold her. The Faust family decides to leave before conditions worsen. After they depart, Eve remembers Thomas's interrupted question from earlier and suspects he had been about to ask whether she had noticed anything strange in the house. Charlie then shows Eve an alert announcing that severe weather has closed the Kettle Creek Bridge.

With the Faust family sleeping upstairs, Eve and Charlie sit together in the living room and discuss the evening. Eve tells Charlie about Thomas standing motionless and unresponsive in the basement and about the unfinished question he had begun asking before the family first tried to leave. Charlie remains skeptical that either incident means anything unusual, and Eve recognizes her own history of overreacting to ambiguous situations.

Shylo then growls and whines near the foyer, where Eve and Charlie discover the front door standing open. Outside, Thomas is kneeling in the snow in his nightclothes, shaking, crying, and repeatedly apologizing in a frightened, childlike voice. When Charlie calls to him, he snaps out of the episode confused and asks where Alison is, saying she was just there. Charlie concludes that he was sleepwalking and guides him through controlled breathing when he begins to panic.

Charlie helps Thomas back toward the house. Eve remains outside for a moment, scanning the dark trees and feeling watched before Charlie calls her inside.

Back inside, Thomas warms by the fire and tells Eve and Charlie that he had sleepwalked and suffered night terrors as a child. His parents blamed demons and told him to call on the Lord for protection. Thomas says the episodes largely stopped after he learned a neurological explanation for them in high school, and he suggests that returning to his childhood home may have triggered an old pattern. He asks Eve and Charlie not to tell his family about the episode outside.

When Eve asks about the unfinished question from earlier, Thomas reluctantly explains that strange changes seemed to affect his sister Alison when they were children. Alison first insisted that familiar objects had changed, then claimed that wallpaper, floors, furniture, rooms, and the house's layout were shifting. Thomas says their parents reinforced her fear by attributing the changes to the devil rather than seeking medical help. After they discovered symbols Alison had carved around the house, they punished her and prevented her from leaving.

Thomas says Alison's memories then began changing. People she had always known became strangers, while strangers seemed familiar, and she eventually believed that members of her family had been replaced by impostors. She tested them with questions about the past and begged them to believe her. Thomas still feels guilty that he did not help her, even though he was only eight, and admits that over the years he has sometimes wondered whether something beyond mental illness was happening in the house. Returning now has given him no confirmation; to him, it appears to be only an old house.

After Thomas goes upstairs, Charlie says Alison's experiences sound like some form of psychosis, while Eve continues wondering what happened to her. When Eve and Charlie go to bed, Charlie and Shylo fall asleep quickly, but Eve remains awake thinking about Thomas's account before eventually falling asleep.

An unidentified girl or woman runs through dark woods while unseen pursuers search for her with lights. She understands the words they call out but cannot make sense of them and believes that, if caught, she will be dragged back to a terrible labyrinth. She keeps running until she reaches the edge of a high cliff with the pursuers closing in behind her.

With nowhere else to go, she jumps. After the impact, everything becomes a black void. A repeated thought says that once they are in, they never leave, and a pale blue light appears in the distance before the scene cuts off.

Heart pounding, Eve jerks awake from a nightmare, though the details elude her. She heads downstairs for water, passing the study where the family is still sleeping, and notices the basement door is ajar. Concerned, she calls out for Jenny, recalling the knocking pattern Thomas used earlier, but receives no response. Two hollow knocks echo from the basement, and Eve peers down the stairs, spotting a small, motionless silhouette. As she tries to coax Jenny to come upstairs, the figure rises to reveal itself as a tall, gaunt adult. Terrified, Eve slams the basement door shut and races upstairs to wake Charlie, insisting there is a stranger in the basement. Despite Eve's urgency, Charlie, still groggy and skeptical, convinces her to wait until morning to investigate. Eve remains vigilant, sitting up in bed with her eyes fixed on the door, convinced that what she saw was real and not a trick of the light. The chapter ends with Eve struggling to stay awake, her mind oscillating between fear and doubt.

Eve wakes after the storm to find Charlie gone and the Faust family still in the house. Thomas is cooking breakfast and says Charlie left for town for an urgent meeting. He also says Charlie told him the basement was clear. Eve is unsettled that Charlie left without speaking to her and becomes more anxious when she cannot find her own phone.

Thomas says the Faust family has no phones because their church is conducting a month-long digital fast. Paige adds that if an emergency occurs, it is part of God's plan. Eve remains skeptical. Charlie's missing winter jacket, boots, and truck support Thomas's claim that she drove away, but Eve still cannot reach her.

In the living room, Eve notices Charlie's locket hanging above the fireplace from a nail. Eve had removed the nails from that wall the night before, so both the locket and the reappearing nail alarm her. After taking the locket, she decides to leave the house, find a neighbor with a phone, and call Charlie before confronting the family further.

Eve leaves the house with Shylo to borrow a phone and call Charlie. Tire tracks lead away from the property, and the Faust family's moving truck is still parked along Heritage Lane. As Eve walks, she remembers Realtor Mr. Dayton describing the area as having many stray dogs and saying some locals call it Stray Dog Summit.

Eve intends to visit 3708 Heritage Lane but reaches a driveway marked 3707 instead. She follows it to an isolated bungalow and rings the bell several times. No one answers, and a light visible inside switches off. As Eve prepares to leave, an older woman named Heather appears behind her.

Shylo, normally wary of strangers, immediately approaches Heather and allows her to pet her. Heather says she used to foster stray dogs, but when Eve mentions Stray Dog Summit and the area's supposed abundance of strays, Heather says she has never heard of either. Eve asks to use Heather's phone to contact Charlie, and Heather unlocks the house and invites Eve and Shylo inside.

Inside Heather's house, Eve uses a rotary phone to call Charlie. Charlie initially does not recognize Eve's voice because the call comes from an unfamiliar number. Eve asks where she is and when she is coming back, but Charlie sounds distracted and impatient. When Eve mentions finding Charlie's locket above the fireplace, Eve hears a muffled voice speaking to Charlie before the call abruptly ends. Eve redials, but Charlie does not answer.

As Eve prepares to leave, Heather overhears Thomas's name and realizes Eve is talking about Thomas Faust. Heather says she used to babysit Thomas and describes herself as his honorary aunt. She is surprised that he returned to the area without visiting her and says Thomas used to hide in the basement when he was a child. Eve lies that Thomas spoke fondly of Heather so she will not feel forgotten.

Curious about Thomas's past and the house, Eve accepts Heather's offer of tea and decides to stay longer, partly hoping Charlie may call back.

While having tea with Heather, Eve asks about 3709 Heritage Lane. Heather says it may be the oldest structure on the mountain and rejects the story that a fire destroyed the area's historical records. According to Heather, someone stole the records from town hall in the early 1950s, although even her husband Michael remembered a fire instead. While Heather prepares tea, Eve and Shylo both notice a faint thud and dragging sound from deeper in the house.

Heather then contradicts Thomas's account of Alison. She says Thomas was an only child and that Alison was a lost girl who appeared on the Faust property in a nightgown with little memory of who she was or where she came from. Police could not identify her, and the Fausts became her temporary guardians rather than formally adopting her. Heather says that after Alison became convinced something had altered her life, she attacked eight-year-old Thomas with a fountain pen and stabbed him thirty-seven times before his parents stopped her. Thomas survived, but Heather says he was markedly quieter afterward. The state took Alison away, and Heather does not know what happened to her.

Eve later notices Heather's grandson owns a white-furred Jolly Chimp that resembles Mo. The toy triggers Eve's memory of losing Mo as a child when he vanished from a car even though his seat belt remained buckled. Uneasy, Eve decides to leave. As she prepares to go, Heather momentarily forgets Eve's name, then the rotary phone begins ringing. Eve notices that a hallway door that had previously been closed is now ajar. Heather attributes it to a broken latch, but Eve refuses to walk down the hall to answer the phone and leaves with Shylo.

Eve returns toward home through worsening snow and notices fresh footprints leading away from the Faust family's moving truck. She follows them into the woods after seeing a lightly dressed figure standing near the tree line. The figure moves deeper into the forest, and the tracks eventually end abruptly in a clearing with no obvious explanation.

Shylo then leads Eve to a dilapidated A-frame cabin marked OLD HOUSE. Inside, Eve finds maps and blueprints covering a wall and door, connected by handwritten routes and notes about unfamiliar places, people, and terms. As Eve prepares to leave with Shylo, an elderly, scarred man appears at the doorway and tells her that she is not supposed to be there.

The man initially begs Eve to leave, then warns her about the family staying in her house. He does not explain who or what they are; instead, he says that they are not what they look like and tells Eve to make them leave by whatever means necessary. After he retreats inside the cabin, Eve realizes her own house is surprisingly close. She remembers the pale blue light she saw through the trees the previous night and recognizes that it had appeared near the cabin's location.

Eve returns home and finds the front door locked. Thomas eventually lets her in and says the family delayed leaving because they did not want to leave the house unlocked and because Paige is worried about the worsening roads. Frustrated that they are still there, Eve decides to retrieve universal tire chains from the attic so they can depart.

Upstairs, Eve notices that the wallpaper over the dumbwaiter has been repaired. In the attic she finds a dog kennel and bowl labeled BUCKLEY, matching the name of Thomas's childhood Labrador. She locates the tire chains in a small front alcove, along with a box labeled CHARLOTTE'S STUFF (DONATE) containing Charlie's old camera and photography equipment. Looking outside, Eve sees Thomas go behind the shed, scream, strike the side of his head, compose himself, and then smoke a cigarette while continuing down the driveway.

Near the attic window, Eve finds a message carved into the sill: DON'T FORGET WHICH HOUSE YOU'RE IN. Soon afterward, the dumbwaiter rises into the attic empty. Damp, adult-sized footprints lead away from its opening and continue toward the attic exit. Eve tries to leave, but her flashlight fails and the attic ladder suddenly slams shut beneath her.

In the darkness, Eve hears movement. Her flashlight briefly comes back on and reveals a tall woman in a tattered hospital gown with a shaved head, standing motionless before advancing in irregular bursts. Eve screams and pounds on the hatch as the figure closes in. The attic hatch suddenly opens beneath her, and Eve falls down the ladder and strikes the banister.

A fragment begins with the repeated thought that she has to hide. An unidentified woman then wakes in a small beige room containing a rickety bed and a window overlooking a murky pond. She has been there for months, possibly years, and has lost track of time, remembering only that she stopped counting around when the snow stopped falling in March, or perhaps February. Her next thought cuts off unfinished.

Eve wakes on the living room couch after her fall from the attic, with a pounding headache and fragmented memories. Thomas and Paige say she screamed for help, struck her head, briefly blacked out, and then passed out again for ten to fifteen minutes. Eve tells them she saw a woman in a hospital gown in the attic and may have seen the same figure on the basement stairs the night before. Paige wants to call the police, while Thomas suggests the figure could be a squatter and goes upstairs to investigate first.

While Thomas is gone, Paige apologizes for questioning Eve about her relationship during dinner and tells Eve that Thomas originally led her to Christianity after they met at a soup kitchen. Thomas returns saying he found no one and saw no footprints, though Eve believes he is lying. A ringtone then sounds upstairs, and Eve finds Kai holding a cracked-screen phone that she assumes is hers. During the struggle to take it from him, Shylo bites Kai's ankle and refuses to release him until he kicks her twice.

After the fight, Eve realizes the phone is not hers: it bears a Portland Winterhawks sticker and its screen is intact. Kai admits that it is his own phone, which he secretly reclaimed after the family's church collected their devices for the digital fast. Paige says Shylo should be put down, while Thomas focuses on getting Kai medical attention. The Faust family prepares to leave.

Once they are heading out, Eve notices that the stained-glass window in the study has inexplicably become an ordinary clear four-panel window with no sign of recent installation. Searching for Shylo, Eve hears whimpering from the basement and goes downstairs, only to find Shylo sitting at the top of the stairs behind her. A metallic sound then comes from the basement, resembling the dumbwaiter. Eve retreats, locks the basement door, checks that Shylo is uninjured, and decides they need to leave the house immediately.

Eve reaches the bottom of the driveway with Shylo and sees Charlie's pickup stopped beside the Faust family's moving truck. Thomas is speaking seriously to Charlie, and Eve worries that he is describing her as unstable. She stays back rather than interrupt. After Thomas drives away, Eve gets into Charlie's truck and asks to leave the property before explaining what happened.

Charlie tells Eve that she had woken her before leaving that morning and that Eve gave her a thumbs-up before falling back asleep. She also relays Thomas's account of Eve's behavior, which Eve recognizes as technically accurate even though she distrusts his intentions. Eve then asks Charlie whether the upstairs study has a stained-glass window. Charlie immediately remembers the apple-tree window, confirming Eve's memory. When Eve says the window is now ordinary clear glass, Charlie is skeptical but agrees they should spend the night elsewhere.

Charlie insists on returning to the house briefly for clothes and a charger while Eve and Shylo wait in the idling truck. Charlie comes back with a backpack and confirms that the study window has changed and that the replacement looks seamless. Unable to explain it, they decide to deal with the problem later and drive away. Eve tells herself she has seen 3709 Heritage Lane for the last time, while Mo answers with doubt.

Eve and Charlie drive down the mountain and stop at the Kettle Creek Motel, which both of them had previously thought was abandoned. They check into a room despite the clerk's high price. Away from the house, Eve remains anxious and tells Charlie she fears that what happened to Alison may be happening to her, citing the changed window and the phone she had mistaken for her own.

When a sudden thought tells Eve that Charlie may be an impostor, Eve tests her by asking how they met. Charlie accurately recounts their first meeting eight years earlier at a showing of Spirited Away at the Dryden Theatre, including Eve having been stood up by Chetley and Charlie giving her a photography business card. The shared memory reassures Eve, and they eventually fall asleep.

At 3:06 a.m., Eve wakes to Charlie's phone vibrating. The screen says Eve Palmer is calling. Eve answers privately in the bathroom, where a frightened voice identical to Charlie's claims that she never left the house, that the person with Eve is not Charlie, and that the dog is not Shylo. The call ends as approaching footsteps and muffled sounds reach the caller.

The Charlie in the motel appears at the bathroom door. While trying to conceal the call, Eve notices that the black triangle tattoo normally on Charlie's left index finger is missing. Eve takes the truck keys, wallet, and phone and flees the motel barefoot. She nearly hits the pursuing Charlie as she drives away. Although she initially heads toward the road away from the mountain, Eve decides that the real Charlie and Shylo must still be at the house and turns back toward the summit. Her attempt to call her own phone reaches voicemail, and the chapter ends with the truck warning that it needs fuel.

With Charlie's truck nearly out of fuel, Eve stops at a small Chevron station and discovers that the pumps are cash only. She gathers loose bills and coins from the truck and pays inside. A Highway Patrol officer in the store notices her sock-covered feet, increasing Eve's fear that she looks unstable. She buys only a few gallons and leaves.

The same officer soon pulls Eve over. He questions her about sleep, alcohol, drugs, medication, and where she is going, then appears ready to let her continue. As he walks back toward his cruiser, a choppy radio dispatch from an unidentified female voice comes through. Eve cannot make out most of it and begins to fear that the Charlie from the motel has reported her. Acting on that fear, she starts the truck and speeds away before learning whether the dispatch concerned her at all.

Farther up the mountain, Eve nearly hits a lightly dressed girl in the road. After Eve stops, the girl holds her arms straight out, moves backward in abrupt steps, pivots mechanically, then suddenly sprints toward the truck before veering into the woods. Eve refuses to follow and continues toward Heritage Lane.

Eve reaches 3709 Heritage Lane without seeing police behind her. Despite remembering the warning to stay away from the house, she parks in the dark yard, pockets Charlie's locket, unlocks the front door, and enters the foyer.

Eve enters the powerless, silent house and finds the dining table carefully set for six. The phone she took from the motel Charlie rings from an unknown number, and that Charlie's voice asks Eve where she is. Eve ends the call. When she looks back toward the kitchen, a shadowy figure is suddenly sitting at the table; it jolts upright and then darts away into the house.

A voice Eve believes to be the real Charlie calls weakly for help from upstairs. Eve follows it to the room associated with Alison, where the hospital-gowned woman appears carrying a hammer and repeats that Eve has to hide. Eve runs downstairs but finds the front door, back door, and windows blocked or locked. The woman begins counting down as though starting a game of hide-and-seek, forcing Eve into the basement.

Eve passes through a narrow opening and an olive-green door marked with the familiar circular symbol. Beyond it she finds a hidden room filled with paintings of 3709 Heritage Lane in different states. One family painting includes young Thomas, but his figure appears to have been added later with different paint. Nearby photographs depict a much more relaxed family with Alison, her parents, and a chocolate Labrador, while Thomas is absent from the photographs.

At the bottom of a crate, Eve finds a handwritten note apparently written by Alison to herself. The note claims that Thomas is not her brother, that her name is Alison rather than Alina, that her parents Elijah and Vera were replaced by mimics, and that Thomas or a force controlling him has altered her memories and reality. It also tells Alison to play along until she can provoke Thomas into revealing his true face and then strike.

Eve follows a trail of ants from the hidden painting room into an impossibly long hospital-like corridor. There she finds her childhood toy Mo, complete with the same white fur, blue overalls, straw hat, dents, and scratches she remembers. Farther ahead stands Charlie, pale and motionless in tattered clothes. Ants swarm over and into Charlie's body before her eyes open. Charlie tells Eve that she is not supposed to be there yet and urgently warns that someone is almost there and that Eve must hide.

The hospital-gowned woman approaches carrying a hammer, and Eve runs through the shifting corridors until she hides inside a wardrobe in a small checkered-floor room. When Eve is forced to gasp for air, the woman sees her. Eve is then overwhelmed by a sequence the narration identifies as Alison's memories: Alison as an only child with loving parents, young Thomas arriving from the woods, the house and family changing around her, the stabbing attack, her flight through the woods, and her later confinement while insisting that her name is not Alina.

After the memory sequence ends, Alison sets the hammer gently on the floor and leaves. A younger-looking Thomas later enters, finds the hammer, examines it, and hangs it on a pegboard before departing. When Eve finally emerges, the surrounding basement is no longer the same unfinished space but appears partly renovated. She takes the hammer from the pegboard and continues searching for Charlie and Shylo.

Moving through the altered basement with Alison's hammer, Eve finds a room that had been unfinished the day before but is now a fully furnished games room. She hears several people moving above and follows the sounds upstairs, where the house now resembles a carefully furnished 1950s home. From the kitchen she hears Paige, Thomas, and the children discussing someone's absence, and Paige asks Thomas to check downstairs again.

Eve tries the front door and windows, but the door remains locked and the windows remain barred. Thomas catches her in the foyer, seizes her arm, and takes the hammer. Speaking as though Eve belongs to his family, he calls her Emma, identifies her as his sister and the children's aunt, and threatens to call the ward again if she cannot get herself under control. He says allowing her to stay with them is her last chance and nearly says he cannot risk his family's safety before changing the word to stability.

Thomas's certainty briefly makes Eve question her own memory and identity. Remembering Alison's instruction to play along rather than fight the altered reality directly, Eve decides on her own to cooperate until she can escape, return with help, and find Charlie and Shylo. She lies that she took the hammer to hang paintings and agrees to rejoin dinner. Thomas asks whether she has been taking her medication, and Eve says yes.

As Thomas reassures her that she is part of the family, Eve notices that the pockmarked scars she previously saw on his face and neck are gone. Thomas tells her that everyone, including Paige, is pulling for her and leads her back toward dinner.

Eve rejoins the Faust family at dinner while pretending to be Emma. The family treats her as Thomas's sister and the children's aunt. Shylo ignores Eve and behaves affectionately toward Thomas, while Jenny becomes confused about a wrist tattoo she remembers Emma having even though Eve has never had one. Thomas and Newton explain the discrepancy away, reinforcing Eve's decision to keep playing along.

Paige raises Eve's supposed move from the house and refers to Charlotte as Eve's former partner in Portland. After the power fails, Eve notices Charlie's brass locket around Paige's neck. When Paige says she bought it at an antique store, Eve loses control, grabs Paige, and holds a corkscrew to her throat while demanding to know where Charlie is. Thomas tries to calm her and insists that Eve and Charlotte separated years earlier.

Paige then stabs Eve in the thigh with a steak knife. In the confusion, Paige ends up with the corkscrew lodged in her throat and collapses. Eve does not understand exactly how it happened and immediately recognizes that she did not intend to kill Paige. Thomas tries to save his wife while calling for help and gives the address as 3710 Heritage Lane. When Paige dies, Thomas turns on Eve.

Eve retreats upstairs with the hammer. In Alison's bedroom she briefly sees Alison in a blood-spattered nightgown holding a green fountain pen and apologizing before Thomas attacks. Eve strikes Thomas in the face with the hammer, tearing open his cheek and knocking out teeth, but stops short of killing him when he begs for his life. Thomas then addresses her as Evelyn Patricia Palmer and makes grandiose claims about having existed before the forest and the house. He attacks again in the attic, and Eve uses the tire chains to strike him and then wrap them around his neck.

Police arrive before Eve kills Thomas and arrest her. As she is taken outside, the house again shows the antler chandelier and grand stained-glass window. Heather and Michael are among the gathered neighbors. Eve sees Alison at the edge of the woods, now appearing healthier and remorseful, before Alison disappears into the trees. Eve is placed in a police van as she tries to explain what happened.

Nearly three years after the Faust Family Bloodbath, Eve is confined at Greenwood Asylum, a criminal psychiatric hospital in Washington. She still insists that she is Eve Palmer, that 3709 Heritage Lane was her home with Charlie Bastion, and that the official identity of Emma Faust belongs to an altered reality. After being found not guilty by reason of insanity, she learns to tell doctors that her memories are delusions because appearing stable is the only way to avoid the secure-cell wing and move toward eventual probation. Her lead doctor is Preston Karver.

About six months into her confinement, Eve finally reaches the woman everyone else knows as Charlotte Bastion. Charlotte says that, in her memory, Emma abruptly packed her things and left their relationship years earlier. She does not recognize Eve's account of Charlie's locket and urges her to accept treatment. Eve initially continues researching Old House material and similar cases, but the apparent clues worsen her panic rather than helping her, so she stops using the library computers and resumes pretending to recover.

A few days before the chapter's present moment, Eve notices a solitary ant circling on her ceiling. Soon afterward Thomas visits. He has a healed scar from Eve's attack and restored teeth. He recounts a childhood memory in which Buckley bit him and says Emma was the only person who comforted him without trying to explain away his grief. Thomas says he has rejoined the church, tells Eve the doctors believe she is improving, and says he now accepts that she was not in control of her actions. He tells her that he forgives her.

Before leaving, Thomas gives Eve a manila envelope containing Charlie's brass locket. When Eve opens it, the locket contains the blurry photograph Charlie took of her early in their relationship, the image Eve remembers as the only known photograph of Eve Palmer.