Chapter 1 - THE BAG MY MOTHER FOUGHT TO REACH
I heard my eight-month-old daughter crying before I reached the bedroom door.
Not ordinary crying.
Panicked, broken sobs.
I shoved the door open and saw my mother kneeling beside Lily on the floor, forcing a pillow against the side of her face to muffle the sound while holding her down.
“Mom!”
Marlene jerked around.
For half a second, neither of us moved.
Then I crossed the room.
I pulled her away from Lily so fast she stumbled backward into the vanity.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Lily crawled toward me, purple unicorn shirt twisted around her waist, face wet with tears.
I dropped to one knee and lifted her against my chest.
Mom straightened her cream blouse.
She looked irritated.
Not horrified.
Not ashamed.
I will never forget that.
“She was having a tantrum.”
“She’s eight months old.”
“She screams every time she doesn’t get what she wants.”
“She’s a baby.”
Mom’s expression hardened.
Then she said something I had heard in different forms my entire life.
“You always make excuses for the woman causing the problem.”
She meant my wife, Rachel.
Lily suddenly twisted in my arms.
Her eyes locked on Mom’s black leather handbag sitting on the chair.
Mom noticed.
And immediately moved toward it.
Too quickly.
I stepped in front of her.
“What’s in the bag?”
“Nothing.”
“Then leave it.”
She reached around me.
I grabbed the handbag first.
“Ethan, give me that.”
Her voice changed.
That frightened me almost as much as what I had just seen.
I opened the zipper.
Inside were three prescription bottles.
All of them had Rachel’s name on the labels.
My wife had spent the previous month insisting her postpartum blood-pressure medication kept disappearing.
I had told her she was exhausted.
I had suggested she was forgetting where she put things.
Once, I had even let my mother laugh about it.
Now every missing bottle was sitting inside Mom’s handbag.
I looked up.
Mom had gone pale.
“Why do you have Rachel’s medication?”
She stared at me.
Then she looked at Lily.
May you like
And instead of answering, she whispered:
“You have no idea what your wife has been doing.”
