Carol shrugged. “I can say whatever fits the facts.”
“You locked it.”
“You think anyone will believe that?” Carol asked. “A grieving girl with a history of emotional outbursts? Or the adult who has spent a year trying to stabilize this household?”
Lily had never had a history of emotional outbursts. She knew that. Carol knew that. But hearing the lie spoken so smoothly made it feel frighteningly possible. Lily imagined her father standing there, exhausted from a seventy-hour workweek, hearing Carol explain everything in that measured voice. She imagined him wanting peace so badly that confusion might look enough like proof.
Carol set down the toast. “Eat.”
Lily did not move.
Carol’s mouth flattened. “You should start thinking about how you want this story to go. If you apologize to me, I may still be willing to help you.”
Something broke then—not Lily’s spirit, as Carol intended, but Lily’s belief that survival would come from compliance.
Carol had no bottom. No line she wouldn’t cross. No version of events she wouldn’t invent.
If Lily ever got out, the truth would have to be stronger than Carol’s performance.
She took the toast because she needed the strength. Carol mistook that for surrender and smiled.
Upstairs, sometime after noon, the house grew busy. Cabinet doors. Pans. Music. Carol moving through rooms faster than usual. Lily realized with a jolt that Carol was preparing for company.
The idea that people might stand twenty feet above her laughing over iced tea while she sat locked in a dog crate below them made something hot and poisonous rise in her chest.
She waited.
When she heard multiple voices near the kitchen—women’s voices, one man’s baritone—she crawled to the side of the crate closest to the vent and screamed.
The first sound came out thin.
She dragged in another breath and screamed again, raw enough to tear her throat.
Immediately footsteps thundered overhead.
Music blared.
A moment later Carol flew down the stairs, face white with fury.
She yanked open the basement door, came straight to the crate, and slapped the bars so hard the metal rang.
“What did I tell you?”
