I pushed past her, the cool air of her hallway hitting my flushed skin. Inside, the house smelled of lemon polish and roasting chicken. Our mom was in the kitchen, humming a tune from the seventies, setting out dinner plates with precise, rhythmic clinks. She was oblivious. She was in a world where daughters came over for dinner and husbands weren’t predators.
I grabbed Megan’s arm, pulling her into the shadowy recess of the hallway, away from the domestic warmth of the kitchen. I kept my voice low, a jagged whisper that scraped my throat.
“I heard Logan,” I said. The name tasted like ash. “I was in the garage. He didn’t know I’d come back early. He was on the phone.”
Megan blinked, her brow furrowing. “On the phone? With who?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I hissed. “He said he messed with my brakes. He used those exact words. ‘I loosened the line. She won’t feel it until she hits the highway.’”
Megan stared at me. Her brain seemed to stall, refusing to process the syntax of the sentence. It was too violent, too cinematic for her suburban life. “That doesn’t even… Claire, are you sure? Maybe he was talking about… a repair?”
“He said he’d see someone at my funeral,” I said.
The silence that followed was heavy, pressing against our eardrums. Megan’s mouth opened, then closed. Her eyes went glossy, the denial fracturing under the weight of my certainty.
“Your funeral?” she whispered. “Why? Why would he say that?”
“Because he wants control,” I said, the realization hardening in my chest like concrete. “Because I left last week. Because he can’t stand being the villain, so he has to make himself the grieving widower. A thousand answers, Megan, and none of them are clean.”
Megan looked toward the kitchen, where Mom was now pouring ice water into glasses. “We have to tell Mom.”
