Chapter 8
Two Months After Delivery
Maddy is crying in her room, sensory overload from the leaf blower and power mower roaring next door.
The city has issued a ban on gas-powered landscaping tools, but Jackson and his gardeners don’t care and Rebecca can’t be bothered to confront him with everything else she has going on.
At least that’s what she is telling herself rather than admitting that she is scared of him and wants to avoid conflict.
For the past half hour she’s been running back and forth between Maddy and the laundry, and now she hears the teakettle she forgot about starting to scream; she’d promised Maddy Nervous Tummy Tea to calm her down.
Basket of whites on her hip, Rebecca races down the hall past the open nursery door. She is two steps from the kitchen when she registers what she observed.
The laundry basket hits the floor.
The teakettle pierces the air, vibrates the house. She hears a thumping from Maddy’s room and prays she is not banging her head against the wall again.
For a moment she cannot move. The teakettle shrieks along with Maddy, but Rebecca remains frozen there a few strides past the nursery.
She eases back a step.
Another.
Peers inside.
Sure enough, the sensor light above the N0RM LLC laser etching has gone from red to green.