Michael Reeves stood outside the wide kitchen window, his hands wrapped around a pair of pruning shears that trembled despite his effort to stay still. From his position beside the rose bushes, he could see straight into the heart of the house he had designed, financed, and once believed would be a sanctuary for his family. Inside, his fiancée Patricia Knox stood rigid near the marble island, her posture sharp with irritation, while her voice cut through the air like glass.

“Are you incapable of following a single instruction,” she snapped, shoving six year old Abigail so hard that the child stumbled into the counter and let out a muffled cry. “I told you the table must be ready before breakfast. Not after. Is that really so difficult to understand.”

Abigail clutched her arm where it had struck the edge, her small fingers pressing into the fabric of her sleeve as if that might make the pain disappear. She blinked rapidly, trying to stop the tears from falling, because she had learned that crying only made things worse. A few steps away, three year old Benjamin sat cross legged on the floor among scattered wooden blocks, his dark eyes wide with confusion as he watched his sister shrink into herself.

“Do not just stand there staring,” Patricia continued, her voice rising. “Clean that mess up. Both of you are exactly the same. Slow, careless, and ungrateful. Your father works endlessly to give you this life, and you cannot manage one simple task.”