Every night my son took a shower at 3 a.m., and I kept telling myself it was just stress—until curiosity made me look through the bathroom door and I saw something so horrifying, so familiar, and so wicked that I left his home for a retirement community before sunrise… but I
was Hazel, also fully dressed in pajamas, drenched, her long hair stuck to her pale face.
Nicholas had one hand twisted tightly in her hair, pulling her head back and forcing her to endure the icy water. His face, the face of the son I had raised, now carried the same cold and cruel rage I had seen countless times on my husband’s face.
