And there it was, before Jess had a chance to stop it: the ticking bomb that had always been destined, one day, to explode. “I saw you! The day Zoe died I saw you coming out of her room. I saw the expression on your face. You were white as a sheet. It was so obvious something had happened in there but you wouldn’t let me in, you barricaded yourself against the door, and I knew—I just knew—something terrible had happened. And then I got home from school and Dad told me Zoe had died that morning, and he said she’d died naturally in her sleep, but I knew what had happened. I knew it was you. I’ve always known it was you.”

Chapter 56

Audrey

Beads of sweat trickled down Audrey’s spine and pooled in the small of her back. Scenes she had packaged up so carefully and sealed in boxes many years ago ripped themselves open, the past fighting its way into the present. All this time, unbeknown to her, Jess had been rummaging inside those boxes like a child in a dress-up chest, discovering a version of family history that didn’t quite fit but which she had been trying on for size all these years nonetheless.

Audrey gripped the wooden slats of the bench, her head vertiginous with memories, aware that she was tumbling down a rabbit hole and that there was nothing to break her fall.

It was all her fault. She should have been able to protect them, all three of them. But she hadn’t, and this was the consequence of her failure: tales told to fill the gaping hole where the truth should have been.

Chapter 57

June 22, 1988

Audrey peeks around the edge of the curtain to see if there is any sign. Her eyes skim across the square from left to right, past empty benches, parked cars, magnolia trees that have long since shed their bloom.

The square is empty. No one is yet hurrying toward her front door.

She closes the curtain, careful not to let any glaring sunshine into the room. Even in her sleep, bright light seems to hurt Zoe’s eyes.

Kneeling by her daughter’s bed, Audrey watches her sleep and listens to her breathing, imploring herself to hear it differently.

She noticed it as soon as she woke up this morning from a fitful night on the camp bed in Zoe’s room on which she has slept since her daughter came home from the hospital thirteen days ago. The change in Zoe’s breathing: shallow, irregular, as though her lungs occasionally forget what job they’re supposed to be doing. Edward has tried to reassure her, has tried to convince her that she is imagining it, but Audrey knows she is not.

Zoe’s breaths murmur in and then out again, short and sharp, as though wary of loitering too long.

Finally the doorbell rings. When Audrey answers it and sees the home-care nurse standing in front of her she is unable to hold back her tears. As she allows her head to fall on the nurse’s shoulder she does not know whether she is crying with relief that here at last is someone who can explain to her what is happening or shedding tears of dread that her worst fears are about to be confirmed.