She threw them into the passenger seat.

The prognosis was death. Margaret decided she would simply change the recipient.

Part 3: The Path of Vengeance

The drive to the Gable estate took twenty minutes. It was 4:00 P.M. now; the sky was a bruised purple, heavy with storm clouds.

Margaret drove in silence. There was no radio. No hesitation. Her mind was a courtroom, judge, and jury, and the verdict had already been delivered.

She remembered the wedding day. Mrs. Gable had looked at Margaret’s dress—a nice department store dress—and sneered, asking if Margaret was “catering the event.” She remembered Brad making jokes about Emily’s “peasant roots.”

They had always treated Emily like a rescue dog—something to be trained, cleaned up, and kicked if it barked.

They threw her away, Margaret thought, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. Like trash. At a bus stop.

She turned off her headlights a mile before the house. She knew the service road; she used to deliver landscaping stones here years ago, before Emily met Brad. She maneuvered the truck through the wet grass, parking behind a line of oak trees that obscured the vehicle from the main house.

She got out. The smell of wet earth and pine was thick in the air. She grabbed the heavy gas can. The fuel sloshed inside, a heavy, liquid promise of destruction.

She walked up the hill. The mansion loomed ahead, a white monstrosity glowing with soft, amber light. It looked peaceful. It looked like a postcard.

Margaret reached the back patio. Through the French doors, she could see into the living room.

Brad was there. He was sitting on the leather sofa, holding a tumbler of scotch. He was watching TV. He looked annoyed, shifting comfortably, adjusting a pillow.

He wasn’t grieving. He wasn’t panicked. He was relaxed.