Tonight would have been book club, I realized as I shifted against the hard seat of the rocking chair. It squeaked against dead silence as I leaned forward, back, forward, back, listening to the nothingness in the yard and beyond, wondering what book the girls had picked to read and discuss for October. A thriller, Little Does She Know, I remembered seeing on our Facebook group page. The title resonated a little too much with my own life. Although I read each month’s selections, I had stopped attending book club the week Vera disappeared. I cancelled meetups with friends two weeks after that. Church went out the window a couple weeks later.

My faith didn’t die quickly. The first few weeks after Vera went missing I attended church and support groups as if her life depended on it. Maybe if I proved to God I was good enough, believed in Him enough, He’d give me my daughter back. But eventually I had lost all hope. I didn’t know how other mothers did it, clung to God when they lost a child or faced a life-threatening illness that would leave their motherless children behind. I wanted that kind of relentless trust in a higher power, but I didn’t know where to find it or how to cling to it.

After last night’s visit from Detective Montgomery, my family was afraid to leave me alone. Unsupervised. Like I was a reckless child running with scissors. One trip and oops, she cut herself. Yet even I didn’t trust myself alone with such hopeless thoughts. Every night they darkened my bedroom door. Every morning they rose from shallow graves. There were lots of guns in the house, World War I relics Oliver collected over the years. Oliver kept them under lock and key, lest they fall into the children’s hands. Or so he said. He was probably more afraid I would take one and bang! Instant widower. But I’d never shoot myself; the old gun would probably misfire and instead leave me disfigured for life. Whatever way out I took, it would need to be quick, painless, and guaranteed.

Not that I was plotting my own death or anything. I tried my best to shoo away such impulses.

My neck ached with a shooting pain that jumped from the base of my skull up to my temples. Oliver had given me a relaxing neck and shoulder massage, but despite his best efforts, I didn’t sleep. Couldn’t rest. So Oliver had sent me upstairs to bed—where I spent a few short hours soaking my pillow with tears while soaking up Vera’s journal—while I’m sure my family whispered late into the night assurances that it wasn’t Vera’s body they found, that everything would be okay.