Chapter 9 - The Fracture
The truth hung in the freezing air between us like a cloud of poison.
The sudden steering failure on Mark’s truck three weeks ago. The mysterious breakdown that had sent him into the embankment. The emergency surgery tonight when his internal bleeding re-opened.
It hadn't been bad luck. It had been my father.
"He didn't die in the crash," I said, the horror settling into my bones. "So you needed another way to silence him. You needed control of his estate... and his children."
"If I have legal guardianship of your daughters, I control Mark’s legal representation while he's in a coma," my father explained, as calmly as if he were explaining a tax strategy. "I sign the non-disclosure agreements with the bank. I settle the audit. And everyone goes on living their quiet, comfortable lives."
"And what happens to me?" I asked, taking a tiny step sideways toward the rusted fire escape ladder dangling three feet to my right.
"You?" My father raised the tire iron slightly. "You are an unstable mother who lost her children in a blizzard and couldn't handle the grief."
He lunged forward.
The heavy iron bar whistled through the air, shattering the plastic side mirror of the dumpster right where my head had been a second before.
I ducked, throwing my weight into his chest with all the desperate strength of a mother fighting for her children’s lives. We crashed hard into the icy snowdrift.
The iron bar slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the brick wall.
My father was sixty-two, but he was heavy and strong. He grabbed my coat collar, pinning me against the frozen ground, his gloved hand coming down over my mouth and nose, shutting off my air.
"You should have stayed in the waiting room, Clara!" he hissed into my face, his eyes wide and bloodshot.
I couldn't breathe. Dark spots began dancing across my vision.
My fingers clawed frantically at the snow beneath his knees until they brushed against the heavy, frozen unicorn keychain Maisie had left behind.
I grabbed it, swung my arm up with everything I had left, and slammed the jagged metal key ring straight into the side of his neck.
My father shrieked in pain, letting go of my throat as he grabbed his neck, blood seeping through his white leather glove.
I scrambled out from beneath him, pulling myself up the iron rungs of the fire escape ladder just as he stumbled to his feet below me.
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"CLARA!" he roared, his face twisted into a demonic mask of blood and rage.
I didn't look back. I climbed.
