Chapter 1 - The Voice Eleanor Wanted Silenced
The mushroom soup hit Olivia before I even knew there was a fight.
Nine-year-old Brett grabbed the bowl just as my four-year-old granddaughter reached for it and threw the soup across the front of her pale mint dress.
Olivia gasped.
Brett lifted his hand toward her face.
She recoiled before he touched her.
Eleanor stood only a few feet away.
Sipping wine.
Watching.
Olivia began crying.
That was the scene I walked into.
Eleanor approached me as calmly as if a napkin had fallen from the table.
“They’re just kids. It’s nothing.”
I stared at Olivia’s stained dress.
Then at Brett.
Then at Eleanor.
“You stood there and let him?”
She said nothing.
I crossed the room and slapped Eleanor once across the face.
Her wine glass slipped away as she reeled into the leather chair.
Before I could turn back toward Olivia, Calvin came at me.
I hit him once.
The punch drove his heavy body backward into the decorative glassware shelf.
CRASH.
Glasses scattered around him.
I stopped immediately and went straight to Olivia.
She was trembling.
I took her hand.
Then she reached into the pocket of her wet dress.
A tiny silver voice recorder appeared in her palm.
The second Eleanor saw it, the blood drained from her face.
“TURN THAT OFF. NOW.”
I pressed play.
Static filled the room.
Then my daughter Mara’s voice came through.
Mara had been dead for three years.
“Dad… if Eleanor tells you we left that house alone tonight, don’t believe her. Calvin is waiting outside, and she just told him—”
The recording cut.
Silence.
Olivia tightened her fingers around mine.
I slowly looked at Eleanor.
May you like
“What did you do to her parents?”
---
