Twelve Patricia Shelby
Twelve
Patricia Shelby
They know. They know. They know.
I pace back and forth in the nursery. I glance at the bassinet, where my sweet baby sleeps. I have to protect her. No one else can. No one else understands. No one else knows.
This is my burden.
The police came to our house. Spoke to me and my husband. They wanted my story, when I am certain the entire event was in the case file. Still, they made me relive it. Made me speak of him. Asked dozens of questions. This is how I recognized they know something.
Why ask me all those questions if they didn’t suspect something . . . something I did?
I have not been able to rest properly since he was released. On Saturday it became unbearable. I cannot close my eyes without seeing his face. I cannot eat for my stomach will not accept it.
I understood from the moment I heard he would be released that I had to do something. There was no other alternative. As long as Carl Fanning was breathing, my baby would never be safe.
The need expanded inside me until there was no room for air . . . for anything.
I will not allow that bastard or anyone like him to get close to my little girl.
With my arms hugged around me, I keep pacing. I am so tired. My body needs to sleep, but I cannot permit myself to indulge in that luxury. I cannot risk letting down my guard.
My thoughts rush back to the moment he and I came face-to-face five days ago. To that exact instant when I saw him watching me.
Old, sick, frail looking. I wanted to kill him then and there.
I wanted to charge him . . . like a bear protecting its cub.
He stared at my swollen belly, and that lurid grin detonated something hard and scorching inside me. My fingers itched to rip into him . . . to claw out the very veins and arteries that allowed blood to pulse through him.
In my mind, there was no other choice. He had to die.
For that to happen, I had to do my part.