PART 1
“She can never know.”
Four words. That’s all it took to pull me out of the deepest sleep I’d had in three weeks.
I was flat on my back beside my daughter, milk-drunk and dead to the world, when my mother-in-law’s voice came floating up through the floorboards. I almost let it go. New mothers learn to sleep through almost anything — a dog barking, a door slamming, a husband stumbling in at midnight. But something about the way she dropped her voice on that last sentence snapped my eyes open like a hand had shaken me.
I lay still.
My heart was already pounding before my brain caught up.
Diane was in my house.
I hadn’t let her in. I hadn’t even known she was coming.
Then I remembered the emergency key — the one Caleb and I had cut for her the week Lily was born, back when we still thought a key in his mother’s hand was a kindness and not a mistake.
