Chapter 5 - THE FIRE
For the first time in six years, Elise and Lily slept in a real bedroom. I put them in the guest suite upstairs. Lily was mesmerized by the television and the large windows, while Elise wept in a hot shower for an hour.
At 2:00 AM, the smell of smoke woke me.
I bolted out of bed. An orange glow danced across my bedroom wall. I ran to the window.
The workshop was engulfed in flames.
"Elise!" I screamed, running down the hall. I burst into the guest room. She was already awake, holding Lily, staring out the window in absolute terror.
"She's trying to erase us," Elise whispered.
I grabbed my phone and dialed 911. By the time the fire trucks arrived, the heavy wooden shed was reduced to smoldering ash. The fire chief, an old friend of Thomas’s, walked up to me, wiping soot from his forehead.
"Looks like an electrical short, Clara. That old generator Thomas had in there finally blew. Good thing it was just an empty storage shed, right?"
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I looked past him to the edge of the property line. Parked half a mile down the dark road, barely visible in the moonlight, was Margaret’s silver SUV.
She hadn't just tried to destroy evidence. She thought Elise and Lily were still locked inside. She had tried to burn them alive.
