It was a Wednesday, the start of a new college year, and I was slumped at my cramped desk, drowning in a sea of syllabi and first-week reading assignments. I skimmed the pages, but my mind refused to engage, thoughts always circling back to my five siblings.
A year had passed since I’d heard their voices, seen their faces, and the thought of them trapped in that house was eating me alive. Despite all my efforts—the countless phone calls, the desperate pleas to anyone who would listen—it seemed like there was nothing we could do to remove them from harm’s way.
My phone rang, our neighbor’s name flashing on the screen. My heart skipped a beat—each call from this neighbor represented a lifeline. It meant an update about the kids. It meant that they were still alive.
“Shari, the police are at your mother’s house!” The words exploded through the speaker, no time for hello. “They’ve got guns out, they’re about to bust down the door!”
My heart seized in my chest as vivid, horrifying images flooded my mind. Tiny body bags being carried out of my mother’s home by faceless figures in uniforms.
It’s happened, came the thought. They’re dead.
In a daze, I grabbed my car keys and bolted. The drive from my student apartment to my mother’s house in Springville usually took twenty minutes, but today it was an eternity compressed into moments of blind panic.
I hadn’t been back to that house since Ruby had disowned me a year prior. Ruby, the self-anointed saint of motherhood. Ruby, who had turned my life into a surreal version of The Truman Show for her social media disciples. Ruby, who had subjected me and my siblings to her twisted interpretation of crime and punishment all our lives—until Jodi came along, adding terrifying new flavors of sadism to the regime.
Jodi. Our family’s very own cult leader, a false prophet who swept into our lives like a hurricane, turning my mother into a fawning, starstruck acolyte who lapped up her every demented word like it was holy water. My father, once our anchor, had been banished, leaving Ruby and Jodi to rule unchallenged over my four youngest siblings who were still there with them.
I drove through the familiar streets of Springville, a dull, all-too-familiar anger simmering within me as I navigated the quiet of suburbia. Why did no one have any information on the children? Why had they been pulled out of school? Why couldn’t anyone shield them from harm?
Countless warnings had already been sent to the Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS), to law enforcement by me and by concerned neighbors. I’d been shouting from the rooftops for a year. Yet, despite the glaring signs of trouble, no action had been taken. The red flags we’d raised might as well have been invisible, and the system that was supposed to protect my siblings had left them at the mercy of two women drunk on delusion and unchecked power.
I turned onto our sleepy cul-de-sac and encountered a war zone. Police cruisers formed a barricade of flashing lights. SWAT teams prowled our front lawn. Neighbors huddled on the sidewalks, fear and fascination on their faces.
I got out of my car and an officer blocked my path, his face a tombstone. “I can’t let you go past this point, miss.”
“But that’s my house!” I pleaded. “My siblings—are they safe? Where are they?”
Snippets of radio chatter teased me. Was that my brother’s name I heard?
“Please,” I begged. “Will someone tell me what’s happening?”
