Chapter 1 - THE CALL FROM OAKRIDGE
Use the supplied opening as the official Chapter 1.
It ends with Jonathan Evans discovering that his seven-year-old daughter Maya has been forced to scrub the marble floors of their home on her knees every night, using industrial cleaning chemicals that have burned and blistered her hands.
His new wife, Vanessa, does not deny it.
She looks directly at Jonathan and says:
“She has her mother’s sloppy habits, Jonathan. A home like this requires perfection. If you’re too weak to discipline her, someone had to train her before she ruined us.”
That sentence changes the direction of Jonathan’s entire life.
Because Maya’s late mother, Rachel Evans, had been dead for eighteen months.
And Vanessa has just repeated almost word for word something Rachel once wrote in a private email two weeks before she died:
“Vanessa keeps telling Jonathan I’m unstable, sloppy, and incapable of running a home.”
Jonathan had never seen that email.
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