Trapped. For two days, I was well and truly trapped. No phone, no laptop, no contact with the outside world. No contact with Dad. The fury I felt after the showdown in Richard’s office slowly curdled into a helpless, gnawing anxiety. What had my mother meant? What would he have done? The words replayed in my mind, a tormenting loop.
My father was gentle. Loving. He was a man who rescued spiders from the bathtub and cried at the end of sad movies. The idea of him doing something that would make my mother this terrified was ludicrous. It was a lie. Another one of her manipulations to justify what she did. It had to be.
But the seed of doubt Barron had planted had been watered. It was starting to sprout.
On the third day of my incarceration, I began my search. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. A clue. A weapon. Anything. I remembered what my mother had said when I first arrived: it used to be a guest room. They had redecorated, but maybe they had missed something.
I started with the closet, running my hands along the back wall. I tapped on the floorboards, listening for a hollow sound. Nothing. I checked behind the heating vent, finding only dust and a dead spider. Frustration mounted. I was about to give up when my eyes fell on the brand-new carpet. On a whim, I got on my hands and knees and pulled at a corner near the wall. It was tacked down, but I managed to pry a small section up.
Underneath, the old wooden floorboard was a slightly different color. It was looser than the ones around it. My heart began to pound a frantic rhythm against my ribs. Using my fingernails, I worked at the edge of the board until it lifted.
There, in the shallow space below, lay a small, crumpled piece of paper. It wasn’t a letter. It was a pharmacy receipt.
It was dated a year ago, long before my mother had left. My eyes scanned the details. The name on the prescription was for Claire Taylor—my mother. But it was the name of the medication that made me go cold. It was a powerful anti-anxiety drug, one I recognized from a health class video on serious mental health disorders. The prescribing doctor’s name was listed, Dr. Alistair Finch. I’d never heard of him. Our family doctor was Dr. Miller.
Why would my mother be on a serious anxiety medication? Why would she be seeing a doctor I’d never heard of? She had always been the strong one, the unflappable one. Or so I thought.
This wasn’t a smoking gun. It wasn’t a confession. But it was a crack. A tiny, hairline fracture in the perfect facade of the villain I had constructed in my mind. The story I told myself, the one that fueled my righteous anger, was that she had happily and selfishly left a perfect home for a richer man. But this receipt… this receipt told a different story. It hinted at a secret fear, a hidden struggle.
A soft knock came at my door.
“Tala?” It was my mother. Her voice was gentle, stripped of the tension from a few nights ago. “Can I come in? I… I thought we could talk.”
I quickly shoved the floorboard back into place, kicking the corner of the rug over it. I stood up, my legs unsteady, the crumpled receipt clutched in my sweaty palm. The truth was no longer a simple, solid thing I could hold onto. It was a maze, and I had just taken my first step inside.
I walked to the door, my heart pounding a new, uncertain rhythm. I now had a secret of my own. The power dynamic in this cold, sterile house had just begun to shift.