Chapter 1
NAOMI
My first clue that something is wrong is that my garage door won’t open.
We have one of those “intelligent” garage doors that senses my Lexus when I pull into the driveway, rolling up the door at the exact moment to prevent collision with my front fender.
The garage door is a feature my husband proudly showed me when we moved into this house, joking that it was smarter than I am, and in all the years I’ve lived here, it’s never proven him wrong.
Until today.
I throw my Lexus into park and stare at the garage door as if it’s a puzzle I have to solve. There’s a way to open it manually—I’m sure of it. I have a distinct memory of Jeremy telling me that if it didn’t open automatically, all I would have to do is—
“Mommy?” Teddy’s babyish voice pipes up from the back seat. “Is the door broken?”
I turn to look at my son, still wearing his white uniform from the karate class I just picked him up from.
He is strapped into a car seat in the back, even though at five years old, he’s getting a little big to be sitting in one.
He looks almost comically big for it, but I read that in the case of a rollover accident, there is nothing safer.
And our pediatrician recommended the car seat until age six, so I ignore the eye rolls from some of the other women at kindergarten pickup.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Then why won’t it open?”
Excellent question.
I glance over at the house, where the lights are on inside, signaling that Jeremy is home from work.
That’s almost as surprising as the garage door not opening, since he rarely makes it home before the very moment we’re sitting down to dinner and often much later. He’s at least an hour early tonight.
My husband manages a hedge fund in the city, and he works harder than anyone I know, but I respect the fact that even if he has to sometimes miss our family dinner, he is home every single night to put Teddy to bed. Aside from the occasional business trip, of course.
“Daddy will help us figure it out,” I tell Teddy.
Teddy nods in agreement. As far as he is concerned, there is nothing his father can’t do. If someone needed to fly around the earth backward to turn back time, Teddy would volunteer Jeremy for the task.
I climb out of the car, tugging at the yoga pants that always seem to ride up into my butt crack.
Then I contort my body into the back seat to release Teddy from his harness, and he rewards me with a gap-toothed grin.
He recently lost his first baby tooth, followed by a second soon after, and then two more.
He was over-the-moon excited after looking enviously at all the other kids in his class who had already lost teeth, but I mourned the loss of that first one as yet another sign of my precious little boy growing up.
Teddy grabs his SpongeBob backpack, which I’m pretty sure weighs as much as he does, if not slightly more.
We head over to the front door of our house, Teddy tilted backward as he attempts to hold up the weight of his backpack.
When I put my hand on the doorknob, it doesn’t turn, and I swear under my breath.
“You said a bad word, Mommy!” Teddy declares, simultaneously aghast and titillated.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean to.”
“What’s wrong?” he demands to know.
“The door is locked.”
“Why?”
I fumble around in my purse, searching for my keys. Considering I always come in through the garage, where the door is never locked, I rarely use them. But I’m pretty sure they’re in here somewhere. “I don’t know.”
“What are you doing now?”
I look up from my purse and flash Teddy what I hope is a patient smile.
Sometimes I think my son expects a running narration of everything that I do, and for the most part, I try to provide it.
Teddy’s kindergarten teacher told me that he had the best vocabulary in the class, and I think it’s because I’m always talking to him. “I’m finding my house keys.”
“Are they in your purse?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
Oh my God, where are they? I shove aside a mini water bottle and what feels like the giant rock that Teddy picked up at the park last week and asked me to save because he thought it was “cool.” And then, thank God, my fingers close around my key chain. I pull it out triumphantly. “Ta-da!”
Obligingly, Teddy claps.
Whatever is wrong with the garage door, we can save it for later.
As always, the parking was out of control at the karate school, which is in a strip mall shared by about a dozen other shops.
I drove around the lot for several minutes before locating a spot, just in time for the clouds that had been hovering all afternoon to break open.
Over an hour later, my hair is still damp, and my shoes squelch with each step.
I want nothing more than a quiet evening with my family.
I fit my key into the lock, but the lock doesn’t turn.
That’s…strange. When I am certain that this key is not functional, I pull it out.
I examine the key ring, which contains only two keys.
One is the key for the house, and the other is the key for my old medical practice, which I gave up when I decided to be a stay-at-home mom for Teddy.
No regrets, but I saved my spare key for nostalgic reasons.
In any case, that is definitely not the key to my house. Although I try it, just in case.
Nope. I’ve got two keys, and neither one of them opens the door to the house.
That’s when I notice something else. The lock on the door is shinier than I remember it. It looks, in fact, brand-new. But to my knowledge, we haven’t changed this lock in years. Not since I’ve been living here.
That’s my second clue that something is very wrong.
“What’s wrong with the key, Mommy?” Teddy asks.
“I don’t know.”
“When you put the key in the lock, you are s’posed to turn it,” he tells me unhelpfully.
“Yes, I know, Teddy.”
“Did you turn it?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe turn it again?”
My temple is starting to throb, and I am tired of trying to sort through the mystery of why my key no longer works in the lock. Instead, I ring the doorbell. When nobody comes immediately, I bang on the door with my fist. Then I bang harder.
“Why are you kicking the door, Mommy?” Teddy asks.
“Just making sure Daddy hears us.”
Thankfully, a few seconds later, footsteps grow louder behind the door.
The lock turns, and my husband is standing before me, wearing his dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar with no tie.
Jeremy turned forty about six months ago, and he looks the best he ever has.
He takes care of himself—he’s a bit of an exercise guru who wakes up an hour early to go to the gym Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then on the other weekdays, he runs at the park.
The sandy brown hair on his head shows no sign of thinning with only a few strands of gray at the temples, his dark brown eyes are just as intense as they were the day I met him, and his diligent flossing must’ve paid off, because his teeth are white and perfect.
There are creases around his eyes when he smiles, which I find incredibly sexy.
Most of my female friends seem to be barely tolerating their husbands.
One of them said she ended up having to make an appointment with a specialist because she’d used headaches as an excuse so many times to get out of sex with her husband.
But I don’t have that problem. Even after years of marriage, I still get that thrill every time I lay eyes on Jeremy.
Our chemistry is as strong as it ever was.
“Daddy!” Teddy hollers as he propels himself at Jeremy, the same way he does every day.
Teddy worships his father. Over the Christmas holidays, we took a family trip to Disneyland, and I would say that Teddy’s enthusiasm for meeting Mickey Mouse paled compared to his enthusiasm for when his father comes home every night. And Teddy loves that mouse.
Jeremy rewards our son with a brilliant smile and heaves him into his arms like he weighs practically nothing, even though I have tweaked my back twice in the last year trying to pick up Teddy. Jeremy is a good father—a great father even. It’s one of the many things I adore about him.
“Daddy, the door is broken,” Teddy says gravely.
“Oh, is it?”
He nods solemnly. It’s something Jeremy himself does—the two of them look so much alike when Teddy nods like that. “We couldn’t get in!”
I hold up my key as I step into the house. “The key wasn’t turning. Did you change the lock?”
My husband hesitates, not answering my question. He lowers Teddy to the floor and cracks open the door to the house. “Teddy,” he says. “Could you go up to your room and play quietly? I need to talk to your mom.”
If I made such a request, Teddy would quiz me about it for half an hour. But when his father asks him to do it, he immediately trots into the house and goes up to his room without another word. And once he’s gone, Jeremy again closes the door to the house and turns to face me.
“Jeremy.” I wring my hands together. “What’s going on?”
My husband rubs his lower jaw, which is just starting to sprout a shadow from having shaved this morning. He’s avoiding my eyes, which is my third clue that something is wrong. My husband does not have any trouble making eye contact. He is the king of eye contact.
“Naomi,” he says. “We need to talk.”