Chapter 2 - The Secret Kept in the ClosetI carried Justin back into the bedroom while Annie held Jordan’s hand.
I set Justin down on the edge of the mattress. The two five-year-olds immediately pressed their shoulders together, their little bodies forming an unbreakable wall between themselves and the world. But their eyes weren't looking at me with the distant, vacant dread of the past year; they kept glancing at Annie’s frayed gray uniform as if she were their anchor in a raging sea.
"Jordan, Justin," I said softly, crouching down until my eyes were level with theirs. "You're safe. Daddy is here. Nobody is in trouble."
Justin’s lower lip quivered. He reached into his pajama pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of yellow construction paper, folded into a tight square.
He held it out, not to me, but to Annie.
Annie knelt beside them, her voice gentle as a summer breeze. "Go on, sweetheart. Show your daddy what you drew. Remember what we talked about? The truth isn't bad. The truth is how we get the monsters out of the dark."
Justin hesitated, then handed the paper to me.
I unfolded the wrinkled sheet.
Drawn in thick red and black crayon was Lauren’s white SUV, flipped upside down beside a broken guardrail. But next to the flipped car, Justin had drawn a second vehicle: a sleek red sports car parked on the shoulder of the highway, with a woman with long yellow hair standing beside it, holding a small silver box with an antenna.
Underneath the drawing, in uneven, phonetic letters, Jordan had written:
AUNTY VICKY WAS SMILING.
My heart slammed against my ribs with concussive force.
"Where did you see this, boys?" I whispered, my voice barely carrying across the room.
Jordan looked up, tears spilling over his cheeks. "The day Mommy’s car rolled over, Daddy. Before the big truck hit us, Mommy was crying on the phone. She said Aunt Vicky had touched the car's computer in our garage."
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Justin choked on a sob, clinging to Annie's apron. "Aunt Vicky told us if we told you, you would give us away to a bad house. She said you hated us because Mommy died."
The air in the master suite turned to solid, suffocating ice.
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