CHAPTER 1
The night her family was ripped apart, the woman stood by her oven, watching the chicken cook through the glass, thinking to herself there was nothing on earth more terrible than a burnt casserole.
She stole a quick glance at the baby monitor sitting atop the counter. She could see her six-month-old daughter’s chest rising and falling ever so slightly, the child’s peaceful slumber a salve for a mother’s anxiety. Her son, now six, had always managed to escape from his swaddle—her little Houdini, she’d called him—but since birth her daughter had melted into the soft cloth, tucked in and content. Our little burrito, Brad had said on the day they brought her home.
Her son had gone to play at Zachary Bloomfield’s house around the corner on Fox Hill Lane after school. He’d sworn to be home by 6:30 p.m. for dinner. Given that the Bloomfield residence was just two blocks away, she allowed him to return on his own. It was now 6:38. She considered calling Zachary’s mother, Mallory, for a status update, but she had promised Brad that she wouldn’t worry until there was something worth worrying about.
Their son had a whirling dervish of a social life: every afternoon brought a playdate or a birthday party or peewee soccer practice. Keeping up with him while simultaneously maintaining a relatively clean household and taking care of an infant left her drained, but she was pleased he was so active, so sociable. Half his classmates whittled away beautiful days lost in the glare of an iPad. Deep down, she was glad he was late. Of course, she couldn’t let him know that.
Besides, the casserole needed another ten minutes to bake. The salad was already prepared and waiting to be tossed with her delicious homemade italian dressing. A side of israeli couscous sat in a warm pot. Brad worked eighty-hour weeks, but he’d sworn to eat at least one dinner a week at home with their family. And tonight was family night.
Most evenings she ate alone with her son, glancing forlornly at Brad’s empty chair, the baby in a bouncer on the floor next to her. Her son talked her ear off: chew and talk. Chew and talk. There was no detail too small or too insignificant to share. He regaled her with tales of bad cafeteria food, which friends he chose to sit with and why, and whose birthday party had the best (and worst) cake. And she sat there and listened, riveted, a blissful smile on her face.
And as soon as his plate was clean, her son shot from the table like a lit firework. She never stopped him but always silently hoped he might stay just a little longer. She cherished the company. With a loving husband who worked long hours to provide and two wonderful, healthy children, she felt guilty even thinking it . . . but was she lonely?
Most nights Brad got home exhausted, tossed his clothes into a pile on the bedroom floor, and collapsed into bed. A three-minute How was your day and a chaste peck on the lips, and suddenly it was the next morning. They hadn’t been intimate since their daughter was born. She had been anxiously waiting for him to make the first move, longed for him to slip a gentle hand underneath her tank top. She missed his touch, feeling his weight on her, the roughness of his stubble on her face. She knew Brad was pushing himself all day, every day, for them. They had struggled to make ends meet for as long as they’d been together. Brad brought home $80,000 a year, barely enough to pay their mortgage while providing for a family of four. Their three-bedroom, two-bathroom house was meant to be a starter home, but with finances stretched to their limits, they wouldn’t be moving anytime soon.
Brad worked hard and needed rest. But she still found herself yearning. And not just for physical intimacy. Not that long ago she’d graduated as class valedictorian, captained the field hockey and swim teams, and plowed through college with a 3.9 GPA. She vacillated between med school and law school, knowing she could excel at either. Her mind was sharp, work ethic unparalleled. The world was hers if she wanted it. And she did.
When she got pregnant with her son soon after graduation, it was a surprise but not an unwelcome one. Her ambitions were put on the back burner, where she assumed they would stay warm. But seven years later, her career aspirations had grown as cold as their marital bed. Suddenly she was a stay-at-home mom at thirty. She felt too old to go back to school, but the thought of draining her remaining youth waiting on casseroles made her want to jump off a bridge.
She still had boxes upon boxes of reference books in a storage unit, buried underneath old high school yearbooks and jeans that would never fit again. Medicine. Law. History. On nights like tonight, when she was standing alone in front of the stove, they called out to her. The books were her whetstones, her mind a blade grown dull. Her son was in school, and her daughter would soon be old enough for day care. Perhaps it was time to revive her senses.
In the interim, she needed to rekindle the fire with Brad. Her son had a birthday party down the block on Saturday, and it would take a nuclear explosion to wake her daughter from her afternoon nap. She would drag her man into bed, kicking and screaming if need be. She would end their dry spell—with prejudice.
But in the meantime, the casserole was ready.
She took the dish from the oven, removed the foil, and let the meal stand. She plucked a blonde hair from the bubbling cheese and chastised herself for not paying closer attention. She checked her watch. 6:51. No sign of her husband or son. Now she was growing irritated. And slightly worried.
The table was set. Dinner ready to serve. She called Brad’s cell. It went straight to voice mail. That was odd—Brad never turned his phone off.
She did a loop around the dining room table, straightening out the silverware, smoothing out the napkins. Just when she began to dial the Bloomfield’s phone number, she heard the front door open.
“Mom?” her son shouted from outside. “Can you come here?” There was concern in his voice. And something else . . . a tremor of fear beneath it that sent a shiver up her spine.
“Hon? Everything OK?” she shouted back, chalking her fear up to ordinary mother anxieties. He was fine. Everything was fine. “I’m in the kitchen. Go wash up for dinner. Your father should be home soon.”
“Somebody left something on the porch,” he said, his voice shaky. “Something in a bag. Mom, come here.”
Something in a bag? She hadn’t ordered anything online recently—certainly nothing that might be delivered in a bag. “Is it the dry cleaning?”
“No, it’s not that kind of bag. There’s . . . there’s something wet on it,” he shouted. “It’s red.”
Red?
“Hold on, sweetie. I’m coming.”
Her heart began to thrum in her chest as she went to find her son. The front door was open. She found him kneeling on the front step, untying a large brown burlap sack.
“Honey, stop,” she said. “You don’t know what . . .”
Then she saw what he saw—a spot of red. Not a spot, more like a stain. But the stain appeared to have soaked through the sack from the inside.
“Baby, don’t . . .”
But he had already finished untying it. She watched as he pulled apart the strings and opened the sack.
The look on her son’s face when he saw what was inside would be forever burned into her memory.
His eyes grew wide, wider than she thought possible, his lips trembling, his mouth spread into a horrible O. At first there was no sound. But then a scream welled up from deep within him, a horrifying, anguished howl that rattled her bones.