I Let Her Ruin Herself novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Next Door

My mother walked straight up to Savannah's mother and put her hand over the phone.

She didn't grab it, and she didn't push.

She just covered the camera lens with her palm.

"You want to talk about our daughters?" she said. "Then we'll talk. Tonight, in your kitchen, all four of us, and Savannah too."

Savannah's mother stared at her.

"I'm not letting that girl near my child."

"Then your child can stay upstairs," my mother said. "But I'm going to be in your kitchen at seven, and so is my daughter, and you can film that too."

The red light went off.

"Seven," Savannah's mother said.

At seven o'clock we walked across the lawn that separated our houses.

I had crossed it a thousand times with a casserole dish or a school project or a bad day.

Nobody had ever answered the door with a lawyer standing behind them.

Savannah's father sat at the head of the kitchen table with a legal pad and a pen.

Her mother stood at the counter with her arms folded.

Savannah sat to her father's right, in a cream sweater, holding a mug in both hands.

She didn't look at me.

"Let's keep this civil," her father said. "I'm told you have a recording."

"I have one," I said.

"I'd like to hear why you haven't given it to the police."

"I did. They have it." I took out my phone and set it on the table. "I wanted you to hear the end."

I pressed play.

The wind came out of the speaker.

Then Savannah's scream, then the siren, then Dale's voice, ragged and far away.

"You said Ruby would come first!"

Her father leaned in.

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