Chapter 11 - Evelyn's Final Gambit
I didn't wait for David. I sprinted to the parking garage, jumped into my truck, and sped across town toward Elmwood Lane.
My mind raced with sickening possibilities. What was in that house that Evelyn was so desperate to get before the sheriff arrived? It wasn't clothes. It wasn't jewelry.
Ten minutes later, I slid my truck onto the curb in front of my home.
An Uber was idling in the driveway with its hazards flashing. The front door of our house was kicked wide open.
I marched through the doorway and heard violent crashing coming from the nursery upstairs.
I took the stairs three at a time.
The nursery—the room Anna had spent eight months painting pastel yellow, the room where the white wooden crib stood beneath hand-painted clouds—was completely destroyed.
The crib had been flipped onto its side. The baby clothes had been ripped from the hangers and shredded with kitchen shears. Yellow paint had been hurled across the walls in violent, jagged streaks.
And in the center of the destruction stood Evelyn, holding a bottle of lighter fluid and a silver Zippo lighter.
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"If I don't get to be a mother in this house," Evelyn screamed, her eyes wild, her gray hair tangled like a madwoman's, "then no one will!"
She flicked the lighter. A small, dancing yellow flame caught on the wick.
