Chapter 4 - The Choice on the Staircase
Emma stared at her sister.
“No.”
Marcus gave a tired laugh, the kind he used when he wanted other people to feel embarrassed for believing her.
“She hasn’t been herself for weeks.”
Rachel remained on the staircase. She was a school counselor, trained to notice fear in children who denied being afraid. Yet when the frightened person was her own sister, old memories interfered.
Emma knew what Rachel saw.
The emergency room seven years ago.
The missed family dinners during treatment.
Their mother checking Emma’s purse after money disappeared.
Marcus had built his story on wounds the family already carried.
Emma gripped the cage bars. “The door is welded shut.”
Rachel looked at the weld again.
“She asked me to do that,” Marcus said. “She said she was afraid she’d leave the house while confused.”
“Then why is she on the floor?”
“She wouldn’t stop fighting.”
A warm trickle moved down Emma’s inner thigh.
She looked down.
Her water had broken.
Rachel saw it.
Whatever uncertainty had held her on the stairs finally gave way.
“Eric,” she called without turning around. “Take June and Dana outside.”
Marcus stepped toward her. “Don’t start making decisions in my house.”
Rachel backed up one step, drawing her phone from her pocket.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
He reached for it.
Emma seized the loose panel and drove its corner against the cage door. The metal rang through the basement, sharp and violent.
Everyone upstairs heard.
Eric appeared behind Rachel. He was broad-shouldered from years of warehouse work, but he did not attack Marcus. He simply moved between them and said, “Back up.”
Marcus’s attention split.
Rachel ran up the stairs and locked herself in the downstairs bathroom with her phone.
Emma struck the cage again.
Marcus grabbed the panel through the bars. She held on, though the edge cut deeper into her palm.
“Stop,” he hissed. “You’ll hurt the baby.”
The hypocrisy of it made her pull harder.
Eric remained on the staircase, keeping distance between Marcus and the hallway.
“Give her the key,” he said.
“There is no key.”
Eric looked at the weld.
For the first time, the other members of Marcus’s family understood that the cage had not been locked during a sudden emergency.
It had been prepared.
Sirens sounded faintly somewhere beyond the row of suburban houses.
Marcus heard them and turned toward the small basement window.
His face emptied.
He released the metal panel and walked toward the workbench, where a red toolbox sat beneath the welding mask.
Emma thought he might retrieve a tool to free her.
May you like
Instead, he opened the box and began removing papers from beneath the wrench tray.
Then he fed them into the old utility sink and struck a lighter.
