“She is deeply terrified and wasn’t ready to give me a name just yet,” Lauren cautioned. “But she made it clear it is someone she sees on a daily basis. Someone she believed no one would ever suspect. Someone with authority.”
A block of ice formed in my stomach.
“Does she feel safe in her own home, Mrs. Carter?” Lauren asked, her voice a scalpel slicing through my denial.
“Of course she’s safe,” I fired back, though the words tasted like ash. “I would burn the world down before I let someone hurt her in my house.”
Lauren’s eyes held mine with a devastating sorrow. “Sometimes,” she murmured, “children endure unspeakable things in total silence because they are trying to protect the mother they love from a truth that will destroy her.”
The world snapped sharply into focus. A horrifying montage flickered violently behind my eyes: Hailey shrinking into the upholstery when Mark’s keys jingled in the lock. Her sudden, desperate pleas to avoid family dinners. The physical tremor in her hands whenever his booming voice echoed down the hall. Her desperate, tearful begging just last week, pleading with me not to go to the grocery store and leave her alone with him.
