Chapter 2: The Green Mug
Part 2 ⬇️
I stood there in the heat and I couldn't move.
He knew my name.
Not just my first name.
Both names.
Exactly as they appear on every document I own.
He was seventeen years old and he was looking at me the way you look at someone you've been warned about.
"You need to go," he said.
Not rude.
Quiet.
Almost sorry.
"Where is he?" I asked.
The boy looked back over his shoulder into the house.
Then he looked at me again.
"He's not who you think he is."
I asked him what that meant.
He didn't answer.
He just pulled the door closer to his body, like he was trying to block something behind him.
Then a voice came from inside.
A woman's voice.
Calm.
Familiar with the house in the way only someone who lives there is.
"Who's at the door?"
The boy didn't answer her either.
I looked past him and I saw it — on the table in the hallway.
The green mug.
Chipped on the handle.
The same one from every photograph he had sent me for six months.
The boy followed my eyes.
He knew exactly what I'd seen.
"Please," he said.
"Just go.
Before she comes out."
And that's when I heard footsteps coming down the hall.
---
What she saw next — and what that woman said when she reached the door — is not something I was prepared for.
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The full story is in the link below.
Read it before you judge anyone in this.
