Chapter One
Andi
One month later
It’s funny how time makes us forget. Like a school shooting on the news—you’re shocked, outraged. How can this still be happening?
But you’re also helpless, and letting yourself feel the horror of it for too long will start to change you and jab sharp fingers
into your sense of safety. It will eat at your mental health and destroy any illusion of security you might have carved out
in your small pocket of the world, and that’s why we forget. Or try to, at least. It’s only been a handful of weeks since
the explosion, but we’re all moving on with our lives.
Except Regan. If I knew someone connected an explosive under my car, set to detonate within minutes of the car’s starting, I’d have trouble moving on, too.
Surely it was meant for someone else—that’s what everyone says anyway.
Maybe some teenagers in science class were playing a joke.
One of the police officers used an example of four high school kids who threw a jar of acid off a freeway overpass—it crashed through the windshield of an innocent woman just driving along on her way to a hair appointment, and there she was, over 80 percent of her body burned so severely that she was left disfigured even after seventy-four surgeries.
They think it’s just some unhinged delinquents who don’t really understand the consequences of their actions.
Because what other explanation would there be for targeting a widowed mom in an affluent lake community?
Everyone is on edge, even if they believe that explanation. Nobody talks about it much since Ally’s funeral, not out loud,
not in public, but the wondering sits heavy on everyone’s chests and people exchange pensive looks of solidarity in the streets,
speaking more quietly to one another than they used to—an us-against-them sentiment—even though we don’t know who “they” are.
“Just because I’m a newlywed doesn’t mean I want to have sex in the hot tub,” I say to Carson when I walk onto the back deck
and see him jabbing at the buttons on the side of the Jacuzzi to heat it up.
“It’s unsanitary,” I add. He’s peering at the football game on the TV in the outdoor living room over my shoulder and only
half paying attention. I see the gas fireplace is lit and a couple of wineglasses are resting on the coffee table.
“That’s very presumptuous of you.” He smiles, still distracted. “I didn’t even ask you to join me.”
“Mmm-hmm.” I grab my sweater off the outdoor sofa and he grabs my ass as I pass him. “I’m taking the kids to what’s-his-face’s.”
“Their dad’s?” he says.
“Yeah, that guy,” I say, going inside and hollering up to Roxie and Dez to get a move on. Dez will want to bring the cat,
and Roxie will want to drive because she just got her license, and I’m not really in any mood for it tonight because I have
to spend the drive over thinking about my strategy to deal with Tia, who will inevitably be the one to answer the door and
push my buttons. How will she do it today? Who knows? It’s always new and inventive and I have to remember the meditation
I did last night and how I promised myself I would rise above the drama and be the better person and not react. I have to
get into my Zen place no matter what shit that bitch tries to pull.
Ray will pretend he didn’t hear the door so he doesn’t have to get involved, and Tia will find a way to say something insufferable,
like the casual way she says “our kids,” like they have anything to do with her, and then she’ll try to backpedal and say
when they’re with her and Ray they’re her family, too . . . and don’t I want them to feel loved and accepted? She’ll turn
it around on me like I can’t see she’s trying to help Ray steal them from me—she actually thinks the custody battle will go
his way and that they’re somehow “her/our kids” and not my fucking kids.
I let out a growl of frustration thinking about this as Rox and Dez come outside with their overnight bags.
I know they can sense my mood because there is no talk of bringing the cat or Rox driving.
They pile in and I white-knuckle it on the two-lane road around the lake, thinking how if Tia twists her giant ring around on her finger, pretending she’s not doing it to irk me, or if she brings up some personal thing about Ray just to demonstrate their intimacy—the fact that she knows him better than I ever did or ever will even though I was married to him for fifteen years and she barely fucking knows him—it will take all I have not to . . .
“Mom!” Roxie yells and I slam on the brakes and swerve, just barely missing a blur of something running across the road.
“Shit!” I scream, trying to gain control of the car. When I screech to a halt, the car jerks and I see all of our lives flashing
in front of me for just a moment. Then I breathe. I turn and make sure everyone’s okay.
“It was just a deer. It’s okay,” I say, but I see the silent tears on Roxie’s cheeks and the fear in Dez’s eyes. Everyone
has been so shaken, so traumatized from what happened to poor Ally, that it’s far from okay. Every loud sound is a shock—any
raised voice is a reminder of people screaming in terror, a reminder of the fragility of it all, which they shouldn’t have
to feel at ten and sixteen years old. They’ve been forever changed and I’m helpless to comfort them.
“Look, it ran into the woods. Nobody’s hurt,” I say, and Roxie nods and wipes her tears bravely, not saying a word. Dez turns
and looks out the window.
“Nobody’s hurt,” I repeat under my breath, then restart the car and slowly pull back out onto the road.
At Ray’s new, stupid house—the one he bought across the lake from ours in order to be close to the kids—I pull into the driveway and pop the hatch so the kids can grab their things.
I get out to hug them goodbye, and before I can just drive away in peace, I see Tia leaning against the door frame, twisting her giant diamond ring as the kids bolt past her into the house, where I know there’s Friday-night pizza waiting for them.
Be the better person; don’t react, I tell myself. She waves. Would the better person wave back or see through the condescending nature of the purposefully
taunting wave and just get in the car and go? I can’t decide which is the high road. Before I have a chance to, she saunters
up to my car.
“Oh hey, I just wanted to tell you that you really need to fix the lock on the gate to your backyard. You have a pool so it’s
actually illegal not to have a working lock.”
“Uh. What?” I snap.
“Just a warning,” she says.
“Um . . . You are the one who broke the lock,” I say, wondering where exactly this is going. She literally smashed the padlock with a hammer
a couple of months ago, stating she heard a dog barking in the backyard and that we left our corgi outside in extreme heat
and she was going to call animal services on us. We weren’t even home and Toots wasn’t outside. She was with us, safe, in
air-conditioning, eating an abundance of Beggin’ Strips at the cabin. Stupid twat. She didn’t even manage to get into the
yard before the alarm scared her away, but she still made an official report of animal abuse.
“Oh, let’s not get into that again,” she says.
“Yes, let’s not get into that again. I have a couple estimates to fix the lock and the places where you dented the gate,”
I say. “Would you like them? Then maybe we can drop it.” I really was taking the high road when I decided not to send the
estimates and make things even more volatile.
“Listen, it’s a violation. It’s not safe to have a gate unlocked when you have a pool. Anyone could wander in and drown.”
I meet her eyes, and I can tell she’d probably like to reword that—she knows I’m thinking I would welcome her over to the pool anytime in that case.
She hands me some photos. I take them and flip through the half a dozen printouts.
“What the hell?” I say, looking at the images of my broken gate lock.
“I had to report it to code compliance. You left me no choice. You’ve had weeks to fix it.” I feel my mouth go slack and hear
a sharp bark of laughter escape my body.
“Are you on crack?” I ask.
“I’m on the right side of the law is what I’m on,” she says self-righteously.
This woman has been snooping around my house for months. She calls herself a stay-at-home mom now that she’s married to Ray,
even though the kids are at school all day and she’s not their mom. She literally has nothing else to do. I’ve caught her
three times snapping photos, trying desperately to catch me in the act of being an unfit or abusive or neglectful mother so
she can bring her evidence back to Ray for the custody case and win the day—she’s his own little Barbie doll minion. She’s
made it her full-time job to dig into my past and catch me doing anything slightly distasteful.
When I met Sasha and Regan for margaritas just last Saturday, she was leaving Finnigan’s across the street, and she waited
in the fucking parking lot, making sure I didn’t drink and drive, ready to follow me and call the cops. I had a virgin and
went home early.
Somehow, the woman I walked in on while she was fucking my husband in a utility room at the Lakeview Inn during the town’s
holiday banquet is the morally superior one now.
“You reported it?”
“Also to your HOA. You should be getting a warning from them. I’m just looking out for the children,” she says, tucking her glossy blond bob behind her ear and smiling with her flashy veneers. She twists her ring again and gives me a wink before turning to walk back to the front door.
Don’t react, don’t respond, I tell myself. Everyone in town has seen us go at it. Everyone has seen me react to this taunting, and I always look like
the psycho. I used to be the one who looked like the victim, until enough time went by where people thought I should be over
it, I guess . . . but they don’t see what she’s doing. She’s a master at making it appear like she’s just looking out for