“She threatened to go to the police,” Ava continued, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her oversized sweater, her eyes wide with the terror of a memory she had carried in secret for half a decade. “When we met him on that dark road, he told Chloe to get out of the car. He tried to grab her phone. I panicked and hit the gas pedal to try to get away from him, to protect her. But he chased us in his own truck. He rammed us from behind, forcing the car off the road and into the ravine where the water was rising.”
I stared at her, utterly paralyzed. Every muscle in my body refused to function.
“When the car crashed, I crawled out through the shattered window,” Ava whispered, her voice dropping to a fragile, haunted hum. “I was screaming for help, bleeding, looking for Chloe. But before the ambulance or the police ever arrived, Daniel was already there. He pulled Chloe’s body out of the wreckage before the fire could spread. He found this jacket caught on the broken door frame, and he looked right at me while I was bleeding on the grass. He whispered that if I ever told a single soul what really happened—if I ever said he was at that road—he would make sure I was blamed for everything, and he would take away the only home I had left.”
She clutched the jacket tighter against her chest, rocking back and forth on the kitchen floor.
