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As Sienna Fordparked her car in the garage of her oceanfront Marina del Rey home, she pulledout her phone.
She had justdropped off Candace. And with that final, major responsibility of the daycomplete, she did one last check for missed voicemails and texts. Finding none,she did something she’d been looking forward to all day: she put her phone onsilent.
With her husband,Paul, currently crossing the Atlantic Ocean for an emergency investor meetingin Brussels that would keep him away over Christmas, she knew he wouldn’t becalling tonight. In fact, since it was 4 p.m. here, it was already the middleof the night on his plane. He might even be asleep.
And now thatCandace was 10, she’d developed a real independent streak. When she went to afriend’s house for a sleepover, as she was doing tonight, she often refused toeven answer her phone for a final “good night” and “I love you” call. Siennawould probably have to reach out to Rianne, the mother of Candace’s friend,Lissa, and make her bring her own phone to Candace for the obligatory call. Butthat wasn’t for a while.
Sienna estimatedthat she had a good five hours before she had to worry about such things. Whichmeant she had five hours of uninterrupted alone time. No work calls about thegallery opening next month. No family to feed. No friends coming over. Just Siennatime.
She had a lot ofimportant action items on the agenda. First, she’d start with a bubble bath,before eventually moving on to some white wine, girl dinner, and at least threeepisodes of Top Chef. It was going to be a wild night.
She walked intothe kitchen and threw her keys in the basket on the counter before pulling offher high heels and making her way directly to the bedroom. Her calves werekilling her, and she intended to soak them for quite some time.
“Alexa, playSade,” she called out to the voice assistant as she made her way down thehallway to the bedroom.
“No Ordinary Love”came on as she entered the bedroom and began to undress, laying her clothes onthe bed. Clad only in her bra and underwear, she made her way into thebathroom, intent on finding her favorite bathrobe. As she passed in front ofthe vanity mirror, she stopped and stared at herself.
At 34, she thoughtshe was doing a decent job of fighting the battle against time. She’d hadCandace when she was just 24 and still in graduate school, getting her master’sin art history. Unlike some of her friends who had kids after thirty, she’dmanaged to bounce back physically pretty quickly. It helped that Paul wasmaking $300K by the time Candace was born, affording Sienna the freedom to workwith a personal trainer and a personal chef.
Still, so far atleast, she’d managed to stay firm without artificial assistance. Deciding thatshe’d admired herself long enough, Sienna tied her jet-black hair in a bun. Shewanted a nice bath, but without getting bubbles in her hair.
She found thelavender robe on the back hook of her walk-in closet door and put it on. Itoccurred to her that she was being unnecessarily modest, considering that shewas alone in the house. Years of worrying about a little girl barging in on herhad made her needlessly cautious.
She turned on thewater in the bath, got it to the preferred temperature, then added the bubblebath soap. The noise from the water was loud, so she instructed Alexa toincrease the volume on Sade. While she waited for the tub to fill, she returnedto the bedroom to take off her other clothes.
She moved fast asshe wanted to get in the tub soon. For one thing, she deserved it. And foranother, she suddenly felt an odd chill in the air.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Junior watchedclosely from the safety of the closet, making sure not to breathe too loud.
At first, she wasconcerned that any minor joint crack would reveal her location in Paul Ford’swalk-in closet. But that fear quickly subsided when Sienna Ford started pipingmusic into the bathroom.
There was a momentof anxiety when Sienna stared at her bathroom vanity counter. Junior was surethat the woman had noticed the metal canister that had been placed just behindher husband’s Costco mega-sized bottle of mouthwash. But it quickly became clearthat Sienna was intently studying her own body, not the items in front of her.
There was a secondfearful moment when Sienna approached the closet. As she drew closer, Juniorgripped the three-iron golf club that she’d found in the back of the closet.But Sienna veered left, going to her own closet and putting on a bathrobe overher bra and panties. Junior sighed quietly.
She became evenmore confident when Sienna turned on the water in the bathtub and jacked up themusic. Now, no amount of joint cracking or heavy breathing would betray herposition. In fact, she could probably walk right out and bash Sienna in thehead without the woman ever realizing she was there.
And Sienna Fordwould deserve it, just like the others did. Maybe she wasn’t as overtlyobjectionable as some of them were, but her relentless pressure on herten-year-old daughter was just as insidious.
She might thinkthat having the girl attend “art workshops” twice during the week and onweekends, not to mention thrice-weekly ballet lessons, wasn’t as bad as makingher do math worksheets every night. But because of all the extra-curriculars,Candace missed tons of school and had fallen behind, necessitating the 8 p.m.tutoring sessions that usually lasted at least an hour. The poor thing rarelygot to sleep before ten, far too late for a child her age. And it was having animpact.
Candace was anasty piece of work, constantly mocking the size and grace of other girls inboth ballet and school. Sienna either didn’t seem to know or care that herconstant emphasis on her own body image had been subtly inculcated in herdaughter, who refused to have snacks more caloric than jicama or celery whilestudying.
But like thechildren of the other women that Junior had excised, there was still hope forCandace. She was young enough that a drastic change in her life could make adifference. That was the twin goal of Junior’s efforts.
First, by cuttingout the malignant mothers, who were slowly poisoning their children’s capacityfor empathy and kindness, Junior offered the kids a path to redemption. Withoutthe offending parent, they were far less likely to become vicious teens, capableof destroying another child’s life with relentless bullying. Nor would theygrow into people like their mothers, cruel and hateful, passing on theirvitriol to another generation.
Secondly, byripping them away from the controlling bosoms of their mothers, these childrenwould face a shocking, painful loss early in their lives. The hope was that theheartache they felt would heighten their ability to identify and ease that painin others. And Junior had made a personal commitment to be there to help thesekids through that difficult journey.
But for CandaceFord, the journey to decency could only begin with the sacrifice of her mother,just as it had for Lansing Langley, Samantha Reynolds, Olivia Hackett, andRhett Sinclair. These children could still be saved, but only at a price.
As Junior watchedSienna Ford retreat to her bedroom, she couldn’t help but marvel once again atthe deliciously poetic nature of these women’s demise. They had poisoned theirchildren’s minds, and now they were quite literally being poisoned. The poetrywas her brainchild, though the method wasn’t.
Junior stillremembered when she’d first thought of the idea of using botulinum toxin as apoison. It was during her third month at the Ridgewood Psychiatric CareFacility for Young People. One of her fellow residents, a brilliant young mannamed Kenny Littrell, had mentioned a fantasy about using it in groupdiscussion.
The therapistleading the group wasn’t excited about his comments, but Junior—or Danielle, asshe let others there call her—was intrigued. She’d made Kenny—who was in thefacility for repeatedly setting small fires at home and school—tell hereverything he knew about the concept.
