The box cutter sliced through the packing tape with a sound like a final, ragged sigh. Appropriate, really. My return to Oakhaven, the town I’d fled faster than a sprayed cat eighteen years ago, felt less like a homecoming and more like a strategic retreat ordered by a general who’d already lost the war. The …

He looked my ten-year-old son dead in the face and mocked his stutter—slow, cruel, like he was making a joke for the class. Some of the kids laughed but my son froze, humiliated, while that grown man just stood there grinning. I was in the room when it happened. Not one other adult stepped in. …

Buddy was on the ground, twitching and foaming at the mouth, and the man who did it stood just a few feet away—smiling. I trusted that neighbor for years. We waved from our driveways. He even gave my daughter a graduation card. He poisoned our dog in broad daylight and acted like nothing happened. He …