Chapter 52: An Intruder
Nora woke up with a start, the quiet of her room shattered by an unexpected sound. A faint gasp escaped her lips as she instinctively touched her face. Pain flared through her bruised cheek, and she winced, fingers tracing over the tender, swollen skin. The memory of the brutal attack from yesterday flooded back, and her heart raced.
Rubbing her eyes to clear away the grogginess, she tried to focus on the source of the disturbance. Moonlight filtered through the curtains, casting eerie shadows on the walls. She looked around at the quiet and wondered what it was that had woken her up.
After coming from the police station, she’d had no power to even apply medicine and simply lay down on the bed, surrendering to her overwhelming emotions and tiredness. As she stared up at the ceiling of the room, she breathed slowly, hoping the dull ache in her heart to go away. Her mother had been stalking her to the point that she’d started to worry for her sanity. And now that her mother had been warned, she held onto the hope that Lara Anderson would not appear in front of her again.
Turning her head, she looked at the clock which showed the time 3:59 a.m. Despite the exhaustion that clung to her like a heavy shroud, Nora knew that she needed to investigate the disturbance. As she tried to listen for sounds, all she felt was darkness.
Shaking her head at her own paranoia, she realized she’d woken herself up with a scare and now would be a good time to apply some medicine to her wounds. She could barely feel her side of the face. Slowly, she calmed her breathing and decided to get out of bed. However, she’d barely managed to calm herself down when she heard the sound of something falling from outside the room.
Panic gripped her. The noise that had woken her up was not a figment of her fearful imagination! There was someone really in the house. How could her mother have found her here?
Could it be possible that her mother had somehow followed her here when she left the police station? The idea sent shivers down her spine.
Nora’s breath quickened, and she had to suppress the urge to scream. She knew she couldn’t hide here, feeling like "a lamb to the slaughter," waiting for her mother to come inside and hurt her. Dam* it! How was she supposed to make the woman leave her alone? As tears came to her eyes, she took careful breaths. She could not afford to have a breakdown at this moment.
Her best chance was to gather her wits and confront and protect herself. She already had a contingency plan in place for a situation like this. Her mind raced as she tried to recall every detail of the plan she had formulated for this very scenario.