Chapter 5: The Cabin Road
By 3:00 PM on Christmas Day, I was sitting beside Emma’s hospital bed in the pediatric burn ward.
Her face was bandaged on the left side, covered in sterile cooling dressings and antibiotic salves. The ophthalmologist had given us the greatest Christmas miracle we could have asked for: the lye hadn't penetrated her eye sockets. Her vision would be completely normal, and with specialized pediatric skin grafting, the scarring on her cheek would be minimal.
She was groggy from the pain medication, holding my hand with small, cool fingers.
"Mommy?" she mumbled through the haze of morphine. "Did I do something wrong to Grandpa?"
I leaned down and kissed her unbandaged forehead, my tears finally falling onto her hospital gown. "No, my sweet girl. You did nothing wrong. Your grandpa is a very sick, evil man, and he is never going to come near you again."
Daniel stood by the window of the hospital room, his phone pressed to his ear. When he lowered it, he turned to me, his jaw set like stone.
"That was the State Police," Daniel said.
"Did they find him?"
"They found his truck abandoned at the trailhead two miles from the cabin," Daniel replied. "The roads are snowed over, so he's on foot in the timber. The troopers have surrounded the property, but they want me to identify the layout of the root cellar and the outbuildings."
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Daniel walked over to the bed, kissed Emma's hand, and then looked at me.
"I'm going up there with the detectives, Sarah," Daniel said. "He spent thirty years making me believe I owed him my loyalty. I'm going to be standing right there when they put the cuffs on him."
