I reached into my back pocket and slid the envelope out, letting it hang between us.

“Here,” was all I could muster. “This explains everything.”

She weakly accepted my offering, then her arm dropped to the floor. A trickle of red ran down her nose, sliding over her top lip. She was drifting on the fringes of consciousness. I was running out of time. I searched her pockets, feeling for the hard case of a cell phone. Nothing.

I stood and scanned the kitchen, finding a 1970s-avocado green landline phone hanging on the wall near where the kitchen poured into the dining room. I picked up the receiver and listened for a dial tone. Dead.

“Your cell phone—where is it?” I screamed, begging her to answer me, to save her own life.

“Living room…table,” she breathed.

I rushed through the dining room, blindly circling into the living room where the kitchen light couldn’t reach. The faint glow drifting from the hallway upstairs was enough to identify the shape of a lamp. I fumbled for the knob, fingers slipping until I heard a click. I found the cell phone, in a pink plastic case, next to the sofa and swiped up. It demanded a passcode.

I ran back into the kitchen, adrenalin-fueled panic pushing me. “I need your passcode.”

“0509.”

I gasped. The significance of that number didn’t escape me. Only I knew what it meant, only I knew how it bound us together in chains.

I dropped to her side, punched the passcode on the screen, swiped until I found the green call icon, and dialed 9-1-1. Pressing my fingers to her wrist, the radial artery barely thrummed with a weak heartbeat. I hadn’t prayed in so long, but the entreaty poured out to whoever was listening as my child bled out, that for once in my pathetic life full of regrets, help me save her. With the phone to my ear, I glanced down at her ashen face. Peaceful. Sleepy. Dead?

No, she couldn’t die. I wouldn’t let her die. I felt her neck for a pulse and found nothing, not even a faint throb against my fingertips.

“Don’t leave me!” I cried as the phone line connected.

The operator calmly asked, “What’s your emergency?”

My fingers lost all feeling. The phone cracked against the floor. The screen went black. I saw my tear-stained reflection mouthing the word goodbye.

My daughter was dead.

We had loved each other through everything, through all the mistakes and broken promises. Through laughter and tears. Through fights, hugs, joyrides, and late-night movie marathons. Why couldn’t she have held on for me? We had even loved each other through murder.

After all, I’d already done it once before.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Felicity Portman

OCTOBER