Chapter 7 - The Reckoning
The precinct was loud, filled with ringing phones and the smell of ozone, but the interrogation room was dead silent.
My father sat at the metal table, staring at the wall. My mother sat beside him, weeping into a tissue. When I walked in, accompanied by Detective Miller, they both looked up.
My mother reached out. "Sarah... oh, Sarah, thank God. Are the girls—"
"Do not say their names," I snapped, my voice sharp as broken glass. The room fell silent again.
My father straightened his posture, trying to summon the patriarchal authority he had always wielded over our family. "Sarah, you have to understand. Leo was out of his mind. If I had opened that door, he would have killed us all. We couldn't let him near the girls."
"So you locked them out in a blizzard," I stated.
"I was protecting them!" he shouted, slamming his fist on the table.
"You were protecting HIM!" I screamed back, stepping forward until I was inches from his face. "You didn't call 911! You didn't call me! You turned off the porch light and painted over Maisie's fingernail marks while she was fighting to keep her sister alive in a frozen pipe!"
My mother sobbed louder. "If we called the police, Leo would go to prison for the rest of his life. He's sick, Sarah. He's your brother."
"He ceased being my brother a long time ago. And as of tonight, you have ceased being my parents."
I looked at the two of them. They were small, pathetic people, crippled by their own toxic devotion to a monster. They had sacrificed my innocent children on the altar of their guilt over Leo.
"Maisie remembers everything," I told them coldly. "She told the police about the knife. She told them you mouthed 'Go away'. You will go to trial for child endangerment, reckless abandonment, and aiding a fugitive. And I will make sure you are convicted."
My father’s face drained of color. The authority crumbled, leaving only a terrified old man. "Sarah... please. We're your family."
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"No," I said, turning my back on them. "My family is in a hospital right now, healing from what you did to them."
I walked out of the interrogation room and didn't look back. The heavy metal door slammed shut behind me, severing the ties to my past once and for all.
