Chapter 8 - THE ASHES OF BENNETT STREET
The fire department contained the blaze before it could consume the entire house, though the second-floor bedroom where they had tried to bury me was reduced to a charred, skeletal husk of black timbers and melted drywall. The smell of burned plastic and ruined Pottery Barn bedding hung heavy in the humid Columbus air as neighbors gathered on the sidewalks in their bathrobes and pajamas, whispering behind their hands as the flashing red and blue lights illuminated the neighborhood. My mother and Jessica were not standing together on the front porch anymore. They were separated, sitting in the back of two distinct police cruisers, their hands cuffed behind their backs as the lead detective listened intently to the audio files playing back through the external speaker of my digital recorder.
The audio filled the quiet night air with undeniable clarity. My mother’s cold, clinical voice discussing how to handle "Caitlyn's episodes." Jessica’s sharp, gleeful laugh echoing down the hallway. And finally, unmistakably, my sister's chilling final words captured right before the deadbolt slid home: "Let her burn." The detective, a gray-haired veteran with tired eyes and a clipboard, walked slowly across the trampled hydrangeas toward where Marcus and I were sitting in the back of an ambulance while paramedics checked my lungs with a stethoscope. He clicked off the recorder, looked down at me with a mixture of profound sympathy and grim professional respect, and closed his notebook.
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"That's all we need, Ms. Monroe," the detective said softly, tipping his hat. "Warrants for attempted murder, premeditated arson, and reckless endangerment are already being signed by a judge on call. They aren't going home tonight. And they won't be coming home for a very, very long time." I nodded, taking a deep, clean breath of the night air—air that tasted of ozone, damp grass, and absolute, unadulterated freedom. The white siding on Bennett Street looked ridiculous under the stark glare of the police spotlights, peeling and scarred by soot, revealing the cheap, rotting wood underneath the pristine paint. My mother had always told me that control creates safety, but she had been wrong about everything. Control was just a cage built by cowards who were terrified of the truth.
Three months later, the house on Bennett Street was sold at a forced foreclosure auction to pay for legal fees, and the new owners ripped out the white siding entirely, replacing it with dark, modern timber that let the sunlight flood straight through every single window. I didn't attend the trial. I didn't need to hear my mother try to spin her clinical lies to a jury of strangers who could see right through her pearls. She was sentenced to twenty-five years without the possibility of parole, while Jessica received fifteen for her direct complicity in the arson plot. I changed my name legally that autumn, dropping Monroe completely and taking my grandmother’s maiden name—a name that didn't come with a manual, a prescription bottle, or a locked door. On a crisp October afternoon, Marcus and I painted the second bedroom of our new apartment a bright, unapologetic shade of forest green, leaving the doors wide open, with no locks, no surveillance, and no fear.
