Chapter 5 - The Glass House
The headlights swept across the gravel turnout of the lake overlook before I could even drop my phone into the passenger seat.
A sleek black Suburban pulled up beside my Civic, blocking my exit. The engine cut off, and the driver's side door clicked open. Suzanne Lockheart stepped out into the night air, her posture rigid, her coat pulled tightly around her shoulders despite the mild spring evening.
She didn't look like a grieving mother anymore. In the amber glow of the parking lot light, her eyes were sharp, calculating, and cold.
She walked slowly toward my driver's side window and tapped twice on the glass with her knuckles.
I rolled the window down three inches, enough for her voice to cut through the night.
“You’ve been playing a very dangerous game, young lady,” Suzanne said, her voice eerily calm, devoid of the warmth she usually wore at my parents' dinner table.
“I didn't ask to be part of your delusion, Mrs. Lockheart,” I replied, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white.
“Delusion?” A bitter, humorless laugh escaped her lips. “Do you really think your parents came up with this arrangement on their own? Do you think poor, weak-willed Arthur and your pathetic excuse for a mother had the brains to orchestrate a twelve-year transition?”
The words hit me like physical blows. “What are you talking about?”
“Your parents were drowning in debt when Claire died,” Suzanne said, leaning closer to the glass, her breath fogging the top edge of the window. “Your father’s business went under. They were going to lose this house, lose everything. I was the one who offered them a choice. Keep a girl of the right age, keep her hidden away, let me visit her room once a year to feel like my daughter hadn't completely vanished from the earth—and your family’s financial sins would be wiped clean.”
She smiled, a thin, chilling curve of her lips.
“And they agreed,” she whispered. “They sold your life for a paid-off mortgage and a college fund for Mitch. And the best part, Stacy? You signed the non-disclosure agreement when you turned eighteen, thinking it was just a medical waiver for your hospital bills.”
My heart stopped. The papers my mother had slid across the kitchen table the day I came home from the hospital. The ones I signed without reading because I was just grateful to be out of the sterile white room.
“You can’t keep me here,” I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts.
May you like
“Keep you?” Suzanne straightened up and stepped back into the shadows near her SUV. From behind her, the passenger door swung open, and two men I had never seen before stepped out onto the gravel, blocking the path between my car and the main road.
“We aren't going to keep you, Stacy,” Suzanne said, her voice echoing in the empty parking lot as she pulled out her phone. “We’re just going to make sure that when you finally do go back to Atlanta... nobody down here remembers you ever existed at all.”
