Chapter 1 - THE THREE DAYS DAMIAN CAME HOME EARLY
Celeste dragged six-year-old Emma through the open front door by a fistful of her hair and forced her onto the rain-soaked porch beside a small suitcase.
“Your father doesn’t want you here anymore. Go.”
Emma grabbed the suitcase with both arms.
Her pale blue sweater was already soaked.
Rain flattened her hair against her forehead.
“He promised he’d never leave me.”
Celeste slammed the door.
The deadbolt clicked.
Emma stood alone beneath the edge of the porch roof, crying beside clothes spilling from the open suitcase into the rain.
Celeste turned around.
Damian was standing behind her.
He had returned from Chicago three days early after a client canceled the final leg of his business trip.
For several seconds neither adult moved.
Celeste’s face lost all color.
Damian opened the door and pulled Emma inside.
Then he stepped between his daughter and Celeste.
“The only person leaving my daughter is you.”
He grabbed Celeste’s travel bag from beside the stairs and threw it onto the covered section of the porch.
Emma immediately hid behind him.
Celeste stared toward the driveway.
Not furious.
Panicked.
“You came back too early.”
Damian stopped.
“Too early for what?”
Celeste said nothing.
Emma’s crying slowly quieted.
She took Damian’s hand.
“Daddy?”
He looked down.
“Celeste said Mommy was coming to get me.”
Every muscle in Damian’s body tightened.
Emma’s mother, Allison, had died four years earlier.
“Sweetheart,” he said carefully, “Mommy can’t come get you.”
Emma looked confused.
Then frightened.
“But Celeste said she didn’t really leave because of the accident.”
Damian turned toward his wife.
Celeste backed toward the kitchen.
Emma’s next sentence nearly brought him to his knees.
“She said Mommy had to disappear because of you.”
Outside, a vehicle slowed at the end of the driveway.
Celeste looked toward it.
Damian saw that reaction.
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And suddenly the question was no longer why his wife had thrown his daughter into the rain.
It was who Celeste had expected to arrive after he was supposed to be hundreds of miles away.
