CHAPTER 1: THE WOMAN BEHIND ME
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Claire’s bruised legs lay exposed beneath the bedroom light. Some marks were fading. Others looked recent enough to have happened that morning.
My mother recovered first.
“Oh my God,” Diane whispered. “Claire, what did you do?”
Claire’s sobbing stopped.
She lowered her hands and stared at Diane with an expression I had never seen before.
Not fear.
Disbelief.
“You know exactly what happened,” Claire said.
Diane stepped backward.
“Ethan, she’s confused. Pregnancy hormones can cause—”
“Don’t.”
My voice sounded unfamiliar.
Diane looked at me as if I had slapped her.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t finish that sentence.”
I reached for my phone.
Claire grabbed my sleeve.
“No police.”
I stared at her.
“You need a doctor.”
“If you call anyone, she’ll tell them I hurt myself.”
Diane let out a wounded laugh.
“Why would I do that?”
Claire pointed toward the dresser.
“Top drawer. Beneath Ethan’s shirts.”
I crossed the room and pulled it open.
At first, I saw nothing except folded clothes. Then my fingers touched a small plastic bottle hidden beneath the bottom stack.
The label had been torn off.
Inside were six white tablets.
Diane’s face changed.
Only slightly.
But I saw it.
“What are these?” I demanded.
“I have no idea.”
Claire spoke through trembling breaths.
“She put them in my tea.”
My stomach turned.
Diane shook her head.
“That is insane.”
“She said they would help me sleep. After I took them, I couldn’t move properly. That’s when she started.”
“Started what?” I asked, although part of me was terrified to hear the answer.
Claire looked down at her legs.
“She would squeeze my ankles. Twist my knees. Press against my stomach just hard enough to frighten me.”
I felt the room tilt.
“She said if I told you, she would make you believe the baby wasn’t yours.”
Diane suddenly rushed toward the door.
I stepped in front of her.
“Where are you going?”
“You’re upset. I’m giving you time to calm down.”
“You’re not leaving.”
Her face hardened.
That loving expression she wore around me disappeared.
For one second, I saw the woman Claire had been living with while I was at work.
Cold.
Controlled.
Furious that she had finally been exposed.
“You don’t know what kind of woman you married,” Diane said.
“And I clearly don’t know what kind of woman raised me.”
Claire gasped behind me.
I turned.
Her face had gone pale.
One hand clutched her stomach.
“Ethan…”
A dark stain appeared on the sheet beneath her.
I called emergency services.
Diane tried to move past me, but I locked the apartment door and stood between her and the exit.
The paramedics arrived within minutes.
They placed Claire on a stretcher, attached monitors and began asking questions.
One paramedic looked at the bruises.
Then at my mother.
“Who caused these injuries?”
Claire’s lips trembled.
Diane answered before she could.
“My daughter-in-law has been emotionally unstable.”
The paramedic ignored her.
“Ma’am, I’m asking you.”
Claire reached for my hand.
Then she looked directly at Diane.
“His mother did it.”
The apartment fell silent.
A police officer stepped into the doorway.
Diane slowly turned toward me.
There was no panic in her eyes.
Only a warning.
“You have no idea what you’ve just done,” she said.
As the officer moved toward her, Diane leaned close enough for only me to hear.
“If they start digging, Ethan, they won’t just destroy me.”
She smiled.
“They’ll discover what happened to Rachel.”
Rachel.
My little sister.
The sister who had died eighteen years earlier.
The sister whose death my mother had always called an accident.
May you like
Before I could ask what she meant, the officer pulled Diane’s hands behind her back.
And for the first time in almost two decades, I wondered whether Rachel’s death had been an accident at all.
