Chapter 1 - The Midnight Escape
The floorboard creaked directly above my head.
Grandma gasped, her frail hands flying to her mouth. She froze like a frightened animal, her knuckles bone-white under the dim glare of the single unshaded bulb hanging from the basement ceiling.
"Audrey," she whispered, her voice trembling so violently her teeth clicked. "Go. Run upstairs. If Patrick catches you down here, he’ll take your car keys. He’s done it before when people tried to help."
"He isn't taking anything," I said, keeping my voice low and steady. "We are leaving right now."
Another sound rattled from the floor above: the heavy, unmistakable drag of Patrick’s leather slippers pacing toward the kitchen. He was probably grabbing a glass of bourbon, a ritual he performed every night after spending hours flaunting his manufactured success to anyone within earshot.
I grabbed the frayed canvas tote bag resting beneath Grandma’s cot. Inside were three items: a worn Bible with a cracked leather spine, a faded photograph of my late grandfather Arthur in his navy dress uniform, and a small, silver-plated hairbrush with half the bristles missing. That was it. That was all a seventy-four-year-old matriarch had been allowed to keep in the damp, freezing cellar of her own daughter’s five-thousand-square-foot luxury home.
"Is that everything?" I asked.
Grandma nodded, clutching her threadbare cardigan against her chest. "They took the rest to the Goodwill two summers ago. Joanne said clutter invites vermin."
A surge of white-hot anger flared behind my eyes, but I swallowed it down. Rage was useless right now; precision was everything.
I took off my heavy winter parka and draped it over her shoulders. It swamped her tiny, hunched frame, falling almost to her ankles. I knelt and gently slid her swollen, arthritic feet into her worn orthopedic sneakers, tying the laces fast.
"Put your arm around my neck, Grandma. Lean on me."
"I’m too heavy for you, honey."
"You weigh nothing," I replied honestly, my heart breaking at how light she felt. She couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds.
Footsteps thumped across the floorboards directly over the basement stairwell. Patrick was standing right outside the basement door on the main floor. The brass doorknob jiggled.
Grandma’s breath caught in her throat.
I didn't head for the stairs. I knew the house’s layout better than Patrick thought. Behind the outdated water heater was an old exterior storm cellar door—bilco doors leading out to the brick patio in the backyard. It had been installed back in the seventies when the original foundation was poured, long before Patrick added the marble columns and heated driveway.
"This way," I murmured, guiding her step by agonizing step through the shadows.
The rusted iron slide-bolt on the cellar door resisted at first. I gritted my teeth, planting my feet into the cold concrete, and shoved with all my weight. The metal shrieked softly, grinding through decades of rust, before giving way.
Above us, the basement interior door clicked open.
"Joanne?" Patrick’s slurred voice echoed down the wooden staircase. "You hear something down there? Did the old woman fall out of bed again?"
I shoved the heavy steel storm door upward into the biting night air. A gust of wind blasted down into the cellar, swirling with fresh snowflakes.
"Rosalyn!" Patrick’s voice dropped its sleepy haze, suddenly sharp and furious. "What are you doing down there?!"
"Go, Grandma, up the steps," I urged, lifting her under the arms as she labored up the concrete incline.
Patrick’s heavy boots pounded down the wooden staircase behind us. "Audrey? What the hell are you doing?! Put her back! She belongs down here!"
We cleared the storm door onto the snowy lawn. I slammed the heavy steel lid shut and kicked the exterior iron latch into place just as Patrick slammed against it from underneath, cursing violently.
"Audrey! Open this damn door! You have no idea what you’re interfering with!" he roared, his fists hammering on the iron.
I didn't answer. I supported Grandma around the waist, half-carrying her across the icy grass toward the side street where my modest Honda Civic was parked beneath a dead oak tree. The engine purred to life on the first turn of the key.
I buckled Grandma into the passenger seat, cranked the heater to maximum, and locked the doors. As I shifted into reverse, the mansion’s front door flew open. Patrick ran into the snow wearing his silk robe, waving a clenched fist, screaming obscenities into the Christmas morning air.
May you like
I didn't look back twice. I pressed the accelerator, our tires cutting clean tracks through the virgin snow, leaving the Callahan estate and its dark secrets behind in the rearview mirror.
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