Chapter 2 - THE MONSTER IN THE GARAGE
The silence in the hallway was absolute, thick and suffocating. My pulse hammered against my ribs, echoing in my ears like a drumbeat of impending doom. I stared at Annie, this unassuming woman in a gray dress who had somehow unlocked the fortress my sons had built around their shattered little minds. She was holding Justin so tightly against her chest that her knuckles were white, while Jordan pressed himself into her side, refusing to meet my gaze.
"What are they trying to tell me, Annie?" I asked, my voice barely a rasp. I didn't recognize the sound of it. The corporate titan who commanded boardrooms and dictated billion-dollar terms was gone, replaced by a terrified father kneeling on a hardwood floor.
Annie swallowed hard, her dark eyes shining with unshed tears. She didn't look at me; she looked down at Jordan. She smoothed his chaotic blonde hair, her touch impossibly gentle. "Jordan, honey," she whispered softly, her voice a soothing melody that cut through the tension. "Do you want to tell your dad what you told me about the night it rained? About the man?"
My blood ran cold. The night it rained. It had been pouring the night Lauren died. The police report cited hydroplaning, poor visibility, and a tragic loss of control.
Jordan peeked out from behind Annie’s apron. His blue eyes, so painfully like his mother's, were wide and rimmed with red. He looked at me, then at the floor, his tiny chest heaving with a sudden, jagged breath.
"The monster, Daddy," Jordan whispered. The word hit me like a physical blow.
"What monster, buddy?" I asked, crawling forward an inch, desperate not to scare him but needing to bridge the agonizing distance between us. "Did you have a nightmare about a monster?"
Justin, still tucked under Annie's chin, suddenly shook his head violently. "Not a dream!" he cried out, his voice sharp and frantic. "Not a dream! The monster in the garage! He broke Mommy’s car!"
The hallway seemed to tilt. The walls blurred. I braced my hands against the floorboards to keep from collapsing. "What did you say?"
Annie looked up at me, the fear in her expression giving way to a fierce, protective sorrow. "When I was putting them to sleep, Mr. Morrison, they didn't want to close the blinds. They said they had to watch the window so the monster wouldn't come back. I asked them what they meant, thinking it was just a childhood fear. But they described a man. In your garage. The afternoon before your wife..." She choked on the words, unable to finish the sentence.
"He had a shiny tool," Jordan added, his voice trembling but gaining strength from Annie’s presence. "He was under Mommy’s car. He saw us, Daddy. He looked right at us and put his finger on his lips. He said if we told, he would take Mommy away." The little boy dissolved into sobs, burying his face in Annie’s dress. "And he did! He took her away!"
A roar of white noise flooded my brain. For fourteen months, I had believed my wife was the victim of a senseless, cruel accident. I had buried my grief in spreadsheets and acquisitions, leaving my sons to be raised by a revolving door of strangers because looking at them reminded me of the wife I couldn't save. But they hadn't just been grieving. They had been living in stark, unadulterated terror. They thought they had caused their mother's death by keeping a secret from a monster.
I closed the distance between us, wrapping my arms around both of my sons, and inadvertently, around Annie too. I pulled them all into a desperate embrace. "I'm so sorry," I sobbed into my boys' hair, the dam breaking after more than a year of suppressed agony. "I'm so sorry I didn't listen. I'm so sorry."
Annie didn't pull away. She placed a warm, steadying hand on my shoulder. "They need you, Mr. Morrison," she murmured quietly over the sounds of my weeping children. "And whoever was in that garage... they need to be found."
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I pulled back, wiping my face, my grief rapidly morphing into a cold, lethal rage. I looked at the fragile, remarkable woman who had uncovered the darkest secret of my life in mere days. "Call me Julian," I said, my voice hardening into steel. "And no one is ever going to hurt my family again."
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