Chapter 2 - The Empty Driveway
The gravel crunched beneath the tires of Aunt Sarah’s station wagon as we backed out of the long driveway, the dust billowing up in our wake to obscure the image of my mother standing rigidly on the front porch, clutching her broken phone like a weapon. Nobody spoke during the first ten miles. The radio was off, and the only sound inside the car was the steady hum of the air conditioner and Leo’s soft, uneven breathing from the backseat.
I stared out the window, watching the familiar suburban houses blur past into fields of tall corn and distant oak trees. My waist still throbbed where the skipping rope had dug into my flesh, and the bandage on my knee was damp with fresh sweat.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” Aunt Sarah asked gently, glancing at me through the rearview mirror. Her knuckles were still white where she gripped the steering wheel.
“I’m fine,” I whispered, though my throat felt tight and dry.
“You shouldn't have had to go through that,” she said, her voice catching slightly. “I’ve let things slide with your mother for years, telling myself she was just stressed, just overwhelmed. But tying you up... treating you like a criminal over a dropped phone... that ends today.”
“Is Mom going to get in trouble?” Leo asked from the back, clutching his smartwatch tightly against his chest as if he expected someone to reach through the window and steal it.
“Your aunt Karen has some serious thinking to do,” Aunt Sarah replied carefully, exiting the highway onto the quiet, tree-lined street where her house stood. “And she’s going to have a very long conversation with a family counselor before either of you step foot near her house again.”
When we pulled into Aunt Sarah’s driveway, the house looked different—safer, brighter, yet still heavy with the lingering shock of what had happened just an hour ago. Uncle Mark came out onto the front porch almost immediately, wiping grease from his hands on a shop rag, his expression shifting from confusion to instant alarm as he saw the scraped dust on my clothes and the grim, tight-set jaw of his wife.
“Sarah? What happened?” Mark asked, jogging down the steps to open the car door. “Why are the kids with us? Karen called five minutes ago screaming that you’d kidnapped them.”
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“Karen lied,” Aunt Sarah said, stepping out of the car and slamming the door. She looked up at her husband, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Mark, you’re not going to believe what she did.”
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