Chapter 2

Sienna's POV

The frantic honking from the cars behind me pierced my eardrums. The light had turned green. I yanked the steering wheel and slammed the brakes, pulling over to the curb.

"Nora, look at me." I gripped the drawing so tight my knuckles turned white. My throat felt tight. "What does Daddy's voice sound like?"

Nora blinked her light brown eyes. Her innocent tone was bone-chilling. "His voice sounds muffled. Like he's buried under a really, really thick blanket."

My stomach violently lurched.

"Don't be silly! That's just the sound of the old water pipes!" I snapped, immediately starting the car.

At dinner, the house was dead silent.

I pushed a bowl of chopped strawberries toward her. Nora took one small bite, then suddenly spat it out like she’d been electrocuted, shrinking back into her chair.

"What's wrong now?" I asked, fighting to suppress my rising panic.

"No!" she shrieked, pushing away the ketchup that I hadn't even offered yet, spilling her macaroni all over the table. She clutched her box of clear apple juice like a lifeline. "Daddy says red things are poison! I can't eat them!"

My fork clattered onto the hardwood floor.

"What else did he say?" I lunged across the table and grabbed her shoulders, my nails digging into her skin.

Nora didn't cry. She just stared at me unblinkingly. "Daddy said the red juice you gave him made his throat hurt so much, and made his tummy feel like it was on fire."

The air was sucked out of the room.

That cyanid-laced Pinot Noir was my absolute darkest secret. There was no possible way a five-year-old child could know about it!

I let go of her, sprinted into the bathroom, locked the door, and with trembling hands, dialed Nora’s kindergarten teacher.

"Mrs. Aldrich? No, Nora is doing fine at school. We certainly haven't covered anything about poison or food poisoning in our health lessons. Is something wrong?"

Hanging up, I stared at my ghostly pale reflection in the mirror.

If it wasn't the school, who else could it be?

A name slithered into my mind like a viper—Caleb's mother. My ex-mother-in-law, Mary Tierney.

After Caleb "disappeared," that neurotic old woman had come after me like a rabid dog. She showed up at my flower shop multiple times, screaming in front of my customers and calling me a murderer. It wasn't until Detective Kowalski stepped in with a restraining order that she finally vanished from my life.

It had to be her! She never let it go. She must have secretly contacted Nora, filling her head with this psychotic garbage to break me mentally!

Without hesitation, I told Nora to stay home as usual. As a single mom, she was used to being alone, so I hit the gas and rushed to Mary’s dilapidated house on the town’s edge.

If that old hag was psychologically abusing my daughter, I swear I'd tear her apart!

I stormed onto her porch and pounded on the wooden door. "Mary! Get out here! Stay away from my daughter!"

The door to the neighboring house opened. An old woman poked her head out, glaring at me.

"What are you screaming for in the middle of the night?" she snapped. "Looking for Mary? You're a bit late for that, sweetheart."

"Where is she?" I ground out.

"She's dead. Massive heart attack about six months ago." The old woman rolled her eyes. "She was completely out of her mind those last few days."

My breath hitched. "Out of her mind?"

"Yeah. Screaming in her yard in the dead of night, scratching her own neck until it bled." She lowered her voice. "She kept insisting her son was trapped inside a wooden barrel, saying it was too dark, too suffocating, and demanding someone get her a crowbar... By the time the ambulance got here, she was dead. Still clutching a piece of firewood."

My car keys slipped from my hand.

Dead for six months?

If Mary was dead... then who the hell had been teaching Nora to say those things?!

A horrifying chill shot up my spine. I stumbled back to my car, locked the doors, and sat there shaking.

My mind was a chaotic mess. Then, I remembered something.

The nanny cam!

Sometimes the flower shop got so busy on weekends that I had to leave Nora home alone. To keep an eye on her, I had installed an HD nanny cam on the living room shelf. It covered the entire living room and hallway.

With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and opened the camera app.

I pulled up footage from a few nights prior and landed on midnight last night: Nora, barefoot in her white nightgown, stepped to the middle of the living room’s Persian rug and dropped to her knees.

She pressed her face flat against the hardwood floor, her lips moving silently as she whispered into the wood.