Despair kept me silent on the journey back to the manor. When I saw the massive house looming out of the forest, its shingles and chimney washed in moonlight, I was reminded of all the years I’d spent confined within its walls. I had only been free for a little under a month, but it felt like a lifetime. It wasn’t a home. It was a prison. They dragged me into the familiar back yard I had played in, ran across, looked out at, and they dropped me in the grass as the glass porch door slid open.
I looked up at David, Catrina, and another woman—her belly round, very obviously pregnant—stepping out to gaze down at me. Catrina smirked, her arms crossed. The blond pregnant woman was unaffected by me. But it was David I dreaded seeing the most, his face without emotion as he regarded the daughter
