Elizabeth closed the door behind her and pulled her phone out. She set a timer for eight minutes, and paced up and down the corridor for the first couple before deciding to call her mom rather than agonizing over what was about to happen. They hadn’t spoken in so long that the five minutes until the timer went off seemed to last seconds. She used to be frustrated by the endless barrage of questions her mother imposed on her but now she was just grateful for the distraction. Her mother was only ever concerned about her happiness, no matter how frustrating she could be. She hadn’t been happy about Elizabeth writing about serial killers and murder because it set her aside as different and made her isolation from her peers at university worse. She wasn’t happy that Elizabeth had run off with S
