Chapter 4 - THE WRONG DOOR
While I was laying in a hospital bed filling out police reports, Eric was having what he considered the most successful afternoon of his life.
I would learn the details later from mutual acquaintances and official records, but at 5:00 PM that evening, Eric walked out of his firm’s executive boardroom with a champagne glass in hand. He had nailed the presentation. The board had verbally confirmed his promotion to Regional Director, complete with a forty percent salary bump and a corner office.
To Eric, the morning had been a minor inconvenience—a momentary hurdle created by a "dramatic wife" that he had successfully bypassed. In his mind, I had probably walked to a nearby diner, called a taxi, and spent the day pouting at my sister’s house. He expected to come home, find me crying in the bedroom, and deliver a stern lecture about how my "hysterics" almost ruined his life, before forgiving me and accepting my apology.
At 6:30 PM, as dusk settled over the suburban neighborhood, Eric pulled his sleek grey sedan into the driveway of our four-bedroom home.
He noticed immediately that the house was completely dark. No lights in the kitchen, no television glowing in the living room.
Smirking to himself, he grabbed his briefcase, walked up the brick steps, and pulled his house keys from his pocket. He slotted the brass key into the front door lock and turned it.
It didn't budge.
Eric frowned. He jiggled the key, pulled it out, reinserted it, and tried turning it again. The cylinder remained completely rigid, locked tight.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
He tried the lower deadbolt. The key wouldn't even slide into the keyhole. The hardware was brand new, gleaming polished brass that hadn't been there when he left at 7:30 that morning.
Annoyed, Eric walked around to the side entrance near the garage. He tried his key there—nothing. He went to the back patio door. The lock had been replaced there, too, and a heavy security bar was wedged firmly into the sliding track from the inside.
Eric’s temper flared. He marched back to the front porch, pulling out his phone to call me and demand an explanation. But my phone was sitting on his own backseat—where he had left it that morning along with my purse.
“Claire!” he yelled, slamming his open palm against the heavy oak front door. “Claire, open this door right now! What kind of sick game are you playing?!”
Silence was his only answer.
He raised his fist to pound on the door again, but before his knuckles could hit the wood, the porch light flicked on, blinding him for a split second.
The front door creaked open two inches, held firmly by a heavy-duty steel guard chain.
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Through the narrow opening, a pair of cold, grey eyes fixed onto Eric’s face.
It wasn't me. It was my father.
