Chapter 2

I stared at Evalena. She was wearing my clothes-a Chanel tweed jacket I' d left in my closet. My jacket. The shock was so profound it left me speechless. It was one thing to see a picture, another to see the theft worn so brazenly in front of me.

Now I understood. The doll wasn't a coincidence. She had stolen it. She had stolen the gift I bought for my daughter and given it to her own son.

"Evalena," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "What are you doing?"

She laughed, a full-throated, mocking sound that filled the small room. "What am I doing? I'm enjoying my life, Kimberly. Something you know nothing about. You're just the help. You tried to steal from me, and now you're trying to attack my son's teacher? You have a lot of nerve."

Ms. Albright immediately sided with her. "You see? And she had the audacity to bring her little thief of a daughter here to cause more trouble."

I lunged forward, wanting to rip that jacket off her, to slap that smirk off her face, but Ms. Albright stepped in my way, blocking me.

"That's enough!" the teacher yelled, pushing me back. I stumbled, my heel catching on the linoleum, and fell to the ground. The hard floor sent a jolt of pain up my spine.

"Oh, Mrs. Gould, are you alright?" Ms. Albright said, turning to Evalena with a sickeningly sweet expression of concern. "This woman is clearly unstable."

I pushed myself up, my hands shaking. I looked past the teacher, directly at Evalena. "You are Evalena Dotson. You are my housekeeper. And you will be in jail by the end of the day."

Ms. Albright scoffed loudly. "Her name is Gould. Mrs. Evalena Gould. And you're delusional."

"She thinks just because she was our nanny for a while, she can make up these fantasies," Evalena added, shaking her head with fake pity.

"This is insane," I said, looking from one smug face to the other. The sheer absurdity of it was making my head spin. They had created a completely false reality, and this teacher had bought it completely.

I took a deep breath, pushing down the rage. Arguing with them was pointless. It was like screaming at a wall. I needed to be smart.

I pulled Lily into my arms, stroking her hair. She was trembling, her small body tense with fear. I held her close, letting her feel my warmth, my presence.

I looked up, my eyes locking with Evalena' s. The fury inside me had cooled into something harder, something colder. Let them have their moment.

"Fine," I said, my voice even. "Let's wait. Let's wait for my husband to get here. Let's see what Austyn Hester has to say about all this."

I knew, with a sinking feeling in my gut, that his arrival wouldn't solve this. It would only make everything worse.