Chapter 9 - The Forgotten Device in the Dark
Emily's bedroom was exactly as she had left it,
a messy,
chaotic sanctuary of a teenage girl whose life had been violently interrupted.
Her school uniform was thrown over the back of her desk chair,
her history textbooks were piled haphazardly on the floor,
and the air smelled faintly of her vanilla body spray.
I stood in the doorway,
my chest aching so deeply I thought my heart might actually break.
I walked over to her closet,
pulling a small duffel bag from the top shelf,
and began throwing clothes into it.
Sweatpants,
t-shirts,
clean underwear,
anything soft and comfortable that she could wear when she finally left the hospital.
I moved like a robot,
my mind racing,
desperately trying to find a way out of the impossible trap Michael had built around us.
He was right.
I had no money of my own,
no access to the savings accounts,
no proof of the poisoning,
and a documented history of anxiety that his expensive lawyers would use to destroy my credibility.
I walked over to her nightstand,
opening the top drawer to grab her toothbrush and her favorite lip balm.
As my hand brushed past a pile of old charging cables,
my fingers grazed something hard,
cold,
and metallic.
I paused,
pulling the objects out of the drawer to see what was buried underneath.
It was an old,
cracked iPhone.
It was the phone she had dropped in the driveway two years ago,
the one Michael had refused to replace for six months as a punishment for her carelessness.
I held it in my hand,
staring at the shattered screen,
a memory suddenly hitting me with the force of a lightning bolt.
Last year,
when Emily was obsessed with baking sourdough bread,
she had used this old phone as a stationary camera.
She had set it up on the high shelf above the kitchen cabinets,
plugged it into the wall,
and used it to record time-lapse videos of her dough rising on the counter.
She had complained to me a few weeks ago that she lost it,
that she couldn't find her "baking camera" anywhere.
My heart began to hammer in my chest,
a wild,
frantic rhythm of desperate hope.
Had she found it?
Had she set it back up in the kitchen?
I thought back to the past three days,
to Michael standing at the counter,
meticulously preparing the tea,
always standing in the exact same spot where Emily used to knead her bread.
My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the phone.
I pressed the power button,
but the screen remained black,
the battery completely dead.
I needed a charger,
but more importantly,
I needed to get out of this house before Michael realized what I was doing.
I threw the phone into the duffel bag,
burying it deep under her clothes,
zipping the bag shut with a loud,
harsh sound.
I grabbed her favorite blanket from the bed,
clutching it to my chest like a shield,
and walked back out into the hallway.
The house was completely silent again.
I walked down the stairs,
every step feeling like I was walking through thick mud,
expecting Michael to jump out from the shadows at any second.
But he wasn't in the hallway.
He wasn't in the foyer.
I reached the front door,
my hand closing around the brass handle,
turning it slowly,
praying it wouldn't squeak.
"Leaving so soon?"
Michael's voice came from the dark living room,
causing me to jump,
a small gasp escaping my lips.
He was sitting in the leather armchair in the corner,
half-hidden in the shadows,
watching me leave.
"I told you,"
I said,
my voice remarkably steady despite the terror coursing through my veins.
"I'm taking her things to the hospital,
and I am staying with her."
"Have a safe drive,
Sarah,"
he said,
his tone mocking,
confident in his absolute victory.
"Take all the time you need to calm down,
I'll be right here when you realize you have nowhere else to go."
I didn't answer him.
I opened the door,
stepped out into the freezing morning air,
and ran to my car.
I threw the bag into the passenger seat,
started the engine,
and backed out of the driveway,
the tires screeching slightly on the asphalt.
As I drove past Detective Vance's car,
I flashed my high beams twice,
the signal we had agreed upon,
and I saw his headlights turn on,
following me back into the dark.
I didn't have proof yet,
May you like
but for the first time in fifteen years,
I had hope.
