They weren’t sitting in a cold interrogation room at the police station. The police hadn’t arrested them yet; the officers were still “gathering facts,” still “taking statements.” The Sterlings had elite lawyers on retainer. They had judges in their pockets. By noon, they would spin a flawless story about a tragic fall down the grand staircase, or a violent carjacking, or a sudden, tragic mental breakdown where Chloe ran away into the storm.
They were sleeping peacefully. While my daughter and my unborn grandchild were slowly dying.
A sharp snap echoed in the quiet room. I looked down. I had gripped the rigid plastic armrest of the hospital chair with such intense, vibrating force that the plastic had cracked straight down the middle.
“I won’t let them live while you die,” I whispered to the rhythmic, mechanical hissing of the ventilator.
I stood up. I didn’t kiss Chloe’s forehead; I was completely done with tenderness. Tenderness hadn’t protected her. I needed to be something else now.
I walked out of the ICU, past the nurses’ station where they looked at me with deep pity, past the weeping families in the lobby. I walked out the automatic sliding doors into the grey, lingering drizzle of the morning.
I got into my truck. I didn’t turn left toward the police station. I didn’t turn right toward my empty home. I drove straight to the commercial construction site where I worked as a senior site manager. I unlocked the heavy steel supply shed.
I walked past the tools and grabbed a heavy, five-gallon red plastic canister of highly flammable gasoline. I took a box of industrial, windproof matches from the top shelf.
I threw them into the passenger seat of the Ford.
Dr. Mitchell’s prognosis was death. I simply decided I was going to change the recipients.
As I put the truck in gear, my phone chimed with a breaking news alert. Local businessman Liam Sterling to host charity gala tonight. They were throwing a party.
The drive to the Sterling estate took exactly twenty-two minutes. It was nearing 4:00 P.M. now; the sky above the wealthy suburbs was a bruised, heavy purple, bloated with incoming storm clouds.
I drove in absolute silence. There was no radio playing. There was no internal hesitation. My mind had become a cold, sterile courtroom. I was the judge, the jury, and the executioner, and the final verdict had already been delivered.
I remembered the day of their wedding. Eleanor Sterling had looked at my dress—a perfectly nice, respectable department store dress that I had saved up for—and sneered, asking a waiter if I was “part of the catering staff.” I remembered Liam making casual, cruel jokes about Chloe’s “peasant roots” during his toast.
They had always treated Chloe like an exotic rescue dog—something pretty to show off, to be trained, cleaned up, and brutally kicked the second it barked out of turn.
They threw her away, I thought, my knuckles turning stark white on the steering wheel. Like literal trash. At a bus stop. With her baby.
