The therapist listened in silence before answering. “It sounds like you uncovered a piece of history that was literally walled in,” she said. “No wonder it felt oppressive. Sometimes our bodies notice what our minds don’t understand yet. You were reacting to something real—you just didn’t know its shape.”
That night, as Emma slept, Lucy lay awake on the sofa downstairs. The house creaked and settled in familiar ways. She listened for the tapping and heard none. Only the low sigh of wind in the chimney, and beneath it, a quiet that felt, for the first time, like relief.