Chapter 5: What Really Happened on That Road
I sat back down on the couch.
"Say that again," I said.
"He was there because he knew I was going to be there." Clara stayed standing.
She seemed to need the distance.
"I had told someone — a friend, someone I thought I could trust — that I was driving out that night to meet a lawyer.
Someone who was going to help me get away from Daniel quietly.
Legally."
"He found out."
"The friend told him.
I don't know if she was scared or if he paid her or if she just didn't understand what she was doing." Clara shook her head.
"It doesn't matter now.
What matters is that he knew.
And he followed me."
"And the car going off the road—"
"He ran me off it." Her voice didn't waver.
"He pulled alongside me on that highway and he forced me toward the embankment.
I lost control.
The car went through the barrier." She paused.
"I remember the drop.
I remember the fire starting.
And then I remember his face at the window."
I couldn't speak.
"He looked at me," Clara said, "and he made a decision.
He pulled me out.
And I've spent ten years trying to understand whether that was mercy or whether he just decided a living person was more useful to him than a d*ad one."
"Because a d*ad person can't be threatened."
"Because a d*ad person can't be controlled." She finally sat down, across from me.
"He needed me afraid.
He needed me to owe him my life.
And it worked." She looked at her hands.
"For ten years, it worked."
I thought about my mother.
About the closed casket.
About the two years she cried and the years after that when she just went quiet, and the morning I got the call that she was g*ne too.
"He took her from us," I said.
"Not just you.
He took Mom."
Clara's face crumpled for just a moment before she pulled it back together.
"I know."
"Does he know she d*ed?"
"I don't know what he knows about your life.
I tried not to find out.
It was safer not to look."
I stood up.
I needed to move.
I walked to the window and looked out at the street below — ordinary afternoon, ordinary cars, nothing that looked like a threat.
But I didn't know what his car looked like.
I didn't know what he looked like.
I was looking for a man I'd never seen and couldn't identify.
"We need to go to the police," I said.
"With what?" Clara's voice was quiet, not dismissive.
"My word?
I've been living under a false name for a decade.
The moment I walk into a station, I have to explain all of that.
And Daniel has people, Sarah.
He has lawyers.
He has records he's kept — real records and manufactured ones.
He'll make me look like someone who faked her own d*ath for insurance money and is now trying to deflect blame."
"Is there insurance money?"
A pause.
"There was a policy.
Our parents had taken it out when we were young.
It paid out after the funeral." She met my eyes.
"I never saw a cent of it.
But Daniel knows it exists."
I turned from the window.
"So he has leverage either way."
"He always has leverage either way.
That's how he operates." She leaned forward.
"But what I said to him on the phone — about Renata, about the others — that's real.
I have names.
I have dates.
I have things I've collected over ten years because I always knew this day might come." She looked at me steadily.
"I just didn't know if I'd be brave enough to use them."
"Are you?" I asked.
"Brave enough?"
She didn't answer right away.
My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.
I crossed to it.
A text from an unknown number — different from the one that had called.
May you like
Just six words.
*She's been lying to you too, Sarah.*
