“You were a sweet little girl,” she said. “Not very smart, but you made Claire and Donnie laugh.” Her smile grew. She’d looked so lovely to me the other day with her stylish hair and her easy way. Now, she looked like a monster. Her straight white teeth, her stale dry lipstick. “I used to find you in Brandon’s room at bedtime,” she said. “You’d be holding his elephant stuffy, pretending to make it talk.” She set a vial on the table. I tried to scream, but the sock gagged me. My vision blurred with tears. “And here you are now, out of nowhere,” she said, irritation cutting through her fake calm. “I kept thinking you would stop digging. You forced my hand, dear, you have to know that.” She pressed her hand against my cheek. It was cold.

“I’m not the asshole. That one up there,” she pointed at the ceiling, “the one who acts all innocent now, he’s the asshole,” she said, amusing herself, as if we were two women sharing stories about our husbands’ mess. “I’m just his clean-up crew. Always been that way.”

She stood slowly, her knees and her back bothering her. Before she was up, I used my core muscles to lift my upper body and drop it on the glass. I’d hoped to shatter the table, make her lose her vial, but the table was solid. Muscles in my arm tore, and the pain was extraordinary. My bottom half fell onto the wood floor, and my upper body followed. My head cracked against the floor.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Heather,” she said.

When my vision cleared, she was on the other side of the table, bending down to pick up her vial. At least she had to search for her vial and syringe.

“Alice?” A voice came through a speaker in the kitchen. “I think someone’s here.”

She rushed to the kitchen. “I dropped something. I’ll be up in a minute,” she said, out of breath.