Chapter 1 - The Laughter Outside
“Let her burn,” my sister said, and the bedroom door locked from the outside.
Smoke clawed down my throat as I screamed barefoot against the wood, while my mother laughed in the hallway like my terror was entertainment.
It was not panic. It was not nervous laughter.
It was the kind of laugh you hear from someone watching a bad reality show on a Sunday afternoon while folding laundry.
I was twenty-seven years old, standing on the second floor of my childhood home in Columbus, Ohio, choking on black smoke while my family waited outside to see if I would stop screaming.
I had come home for dinner. A birthday dinner.
My mother’s birthday, because I had still not learned the hard lesson of separating forgiveness from walking directly into a trap with a wrapped book in my hands.
My name was Caitlyn Monroe then.
I don’t use that last name anymore.
Monroe belonged to the woman standing on the other side of that locked door.
The woman who taught eighth-grade English, wore pearl earrings to parent conferences, brought lemon bars to church fundraisers, and told everyone she raised two daughters with grace after tragedy.
Grace was her favorite word.
She used it the way other people used bleach—to cover up ugly stains.
Our house sat on Bennett Street in a tidy suburb outside Columbus. White siding, red front door, hydrangeas in the front yard, and a mailbox my mother repainted every spring because neighbors notice these things.
People loved our house.
They loved my mother, Deborah. They loved my older sister, Jessica.
And they tolerated me.
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Jessica was the golden child with blonde highlights, a leased sports car she couldn't afford, and the emotional depth of a clearance candle. I was the younger one, the quiet one, the difficult one who ruined family photos by not smiling hard enough.
I stared at the brass doorknob as the wood began to feel hot against my palms.
