Chapter 3 - Digging Up the Past
I wrenched my wrist out of his grip, stumbling backward until my back slammed against the pantry door. My skin burned where his fingers had dug into my flesh, leaving angry red crescents.
“Get away from me!” I choked out, gasping for air.
Evan didn’t lunge. He didn’t chase me. He simply stood there, straightening the cuffs of his hoodie with chilling nonchalance, as if we were discussing what to buy for grocery shopping instead of the systematic drugging of my child.
“She’s not your daughter to control, Evan! I’m calling the police right now—!” I reached into my pocket for my phone, my fingers fumbling blindly.
Before I could pull it out, Evan’s hand flashed out, snatching my phone off the counter where I’d left it charging. He didn’t pocket it; he simply held it out of reach, tapping the screen with his thumb to lock it.
“Go ahead and call them, Carrie,” Evan said, his tone infuriatingly calm. “Tell them your husband is helping your daughter sleep. Tell them about her medical history. Oh, wait—do you even know her full medical history?”
The question hit me like a splash of freezing water. I froze, my hand hovering in mid-air. “What are you talking about?”
“You think Emma’s sleep terrors, her blank stares, her random crying fits started when she turned five?” Evan laughed softly, a bitter, hollow sound. “You think that’s just quirky child behavior or a side effect of your messy divorce from David? Carrie, you were so busy playing the guilt-ridden single mother that you never bothered to look at the family file David left behind before he vanished to Seattle.”
My stomach plummeted into a bottomless pit. “David... David didn’t leave anything. He gave up custody!”
“He didn’t give it up. He fled,” Evan corrected, stepping closer, though I held my ground this time, my fists clenched so hard my fingernails bit into my palms. “David’s family has a history. A neuro-genetic anomaly. Seizures disguised as nightmares. Hallucinations disguised as ghosts. The doctors told David years ago that it passes down through the maternal line. But you didn’t know that, did you? Because David never told you. And do you know who funded the research clinic that tried to treat David’s sister before she died of it?”
I stared at him, my brain spinning out of control. “Who...?”
“My family,” Evan said quietly. “My father was the lead neurologist on the project. I spent my childhood surrounded by patients just like Emma. And when I met you at that bookstore three years ago, Carrie? It wasn’t a coincidence. I knew who you were the second I saw your last name on your credit card.”
The room seemed to tilt sideways. The man standing in front of me wasn’t just a deceitful stepfather; he was a stalker. A predator who had engineered our entire relationship from the ground up.
“You... you targeted us?” I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
“I protected you,” Evan snapped, his voice suddenly sharp, his eyes flashing with manic conviction. “Emma’s brain is degenerating, Carrie. Without those drops—without the exact chemical balance I’ve been regulating every night—she’s going to lose her mind completely by the time she’s ten. Her biological father went catatonic at twelve. I am the only thing standing between your daughter and a padded cell!”
“You’re poisoning her!” I screamed, the grief and terror finally boiling over into blind fury. “You’re drugging her behind my back! Get out of this house! Get out right now, or I swear to God I’ll burn this place to the ground with you inside it!”
Evan stared at me for a long, agonizing moment. The mask of civility was completely gone now, replaced by something dark, desperate, and unstable. He slowly laid my phone down on the counter, backed away toward the mudroom door, and grabbed his jacket.
“I’ll leave,” Evan said softly, his hand resting on the doorknob. “For now. But you can’t protect her from her own blood, Carrie. And when she starts screaming for me in the middle of the night because her brain is tearing itself apart... you’ll be the one begging me to come back.”
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The door clicked shut behind him.
I stood alone in the silent, sunlit kitchen, trembling from head to toe, realizing with absolute horror that Evan wasn't just a monster—he might actually be right about the nightmare living inside my daughter's DNA.
