up, opened the app on my phone, and downloaded every single video file the hidden camera had captured over the past week.
I plugged my laptop into the kitchen counter at dawn. I watched the footage of Evan pacing, whispering, and holding the antique key against my daughter’s hand over and over again, until every detail was burned into the back of my eyelids.
When the sun finally broke through the grey Portland clouds at 7:00 AM, I didn’t call my ex-husband, and I didn’t call a moving company.
I picked up the heavy iron skeleton key that Evan had left on Emma’s dresser. I walked down the basement stairs, past the breaker box and the old wooden shelves, straight to the far corner where the foundation met the damp earth.
I knelt down on the concrete floor, took a rusted iron crowbar from my
