It was how he planned to make me disappear from my own life without ever touching me.
Chapter 3: The Longest Twenty Minutes
Here is what I want you to understand about my mother.
Trent had spent two years quietly working to keep her at arm’s length. Little comments. Scheduling around her. Making me feel like her concern was interference. I’d half believed him.
My mother never said a word against him. She just watched. And when her daughter called and said Trent was weirdly desperate that she not go into his bedroom, my mother — who is not a suspicious woman — felt something cold go down her spine and decided to open that drawer all the way.
Two years of being pushed aside, and she still dropped everything and drove to that house, and it saved my entire life.
I didn’t fall apart in the terminal. I’m almost proud of that. I had maybe twenty minutes before boarding, a husband watching my face for cracks, and a decision to make.
