Chapter 1 - The Cage Behind the Blue Tarp
Jason slammed the metal door before my daughter could pull her fingers back.
“Stay inside until you learn who owns this house.”
Emily crouched inside the dog cage in her pink shorts and dirty white T-shirt, knees pressed beneath her chin. The cage sat behind a blue tarp at the far end of Sarah’s backyard, hidden from the neighboring houses by overgrown arborvitae.
I had come to Westerville expecting a routine Sunday custody pickup.
Instead, I found my seven-year-old locked where Jason’s German shepherd used to sleep.
“Daddy.”
Her voice broke on the word.
I ripped the tarp aside and grabbed a pair of pliers from the open tool bag beside the pool equipment.
Sarah rushed across the patio and planted herself between us.
“Leave her alone,” she said. “Jason is teaching her obedience.”
I stared at the woman I had once been married to.
“You locked our daughter in a cage.”
“She wouldn’t stop lying.”
Emily reached through the bars.
I shoved past Sarah and snapped the small brass lock. Emily threw herself against me before the door was fully open, wrapping both arms around my neck.
Jason stood near the sliding door, smiling.
He pointed toward the neglected swimming pool. Green water pressed against the sagging cover.
“Take another step,” he said, “and you’ll join what’s under that water.”
I lifted Emily and backed toward the side gate.
Her whole body tightened.
“Daddy, please don’t look in the pool.”
Something large shifted beneath the cloudy surface.
A tied black contractor bag rose until one corner broke through the algae, then slowly sank again.
At the same moment, a curtain jerked shut in an upstairs bedroom.
The window belonged to Sarah’s mother, Helen.
Sarah had told everyone Helen moved to Arizona three months earlier.
I looked at my ex-wife.
May you like
She was not watching the pool.
She was watching the upstairs window.
