The Day My Daughter Celebrated Chapter 12

Mark Stevens.

That name I wished I could destroy completely.

That monster I thought would never appear in my life again.

He was out.

The police said he'd received early release for good behavior in prison.

They were just notifying me, the victim, as required by law.

I hung up the phone, all the blood in my body seemingly frozen.

Nineteen years.

I'd spent nineteen years barely pulling myself out of that quagmire.

But now he was back.

Fear, like an invisible hand, gripped my throat.

David saw something was wrong and pressed me until I told him.

His face immediately darkened.

"Don't be afraid, Monica. I'm here."

"If he dares come looking for you, I won't let him off."

But how could I not be afraid?

He was the demon who'd given me a lifetime of nightmares.

The next few days, I lived in constant anxiety.

I didn't dare go out alone, didn't even dare stay home alone.

David stayed by my side constantly.

But what had to come, came.

That day, David had an emergency at his company and had to go.

Before leaving, he repeatedly checked that all the doors and windows were locked.

But right after he left, the doorbell rang.

I looked through the peephole. A face both familiar and strange appeared on screen.

Much older than nineteen years ago, but those eyes still held the same malevolence and evil.

It was Mark Stevens.

I covered my mouth in terror and backed away repeatedly.

He seemed to know I was inside and began pounding on the door violently.

"Rebecca! I know you're in there! Open up!"

Rebecca.

That name buried along with the nightmare—I hadn't used it in years.

"Open up! I came out to see you! Aren't you happy?"

"I heard we have a daughter? Who does she look like? You or me?"

His filthy words overlapped grotesquely with Stella's "Joy Day" rhetoric.

My whole body shook. I rushed to the living room to grab my phone to call the police.

But my hands trembled so badly the phone fell to the floor, screen shattering, going black.

The pounding outside grew louder.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

The seemingly solid security door shook violently.

I knew it wouldn't hold much longer.

In desperation, a thought flashed through my mind.

The kitchen had knives.