But every time I look at Elizabeth, I think of Julian. “He could kill you,” I tell her, wondering if it isn’t too late, thinking of the yellowing bruises on my back. He could kill us all, at any time. We might never see it coming.

“I appreciate your concern,” she says, “But this isn’t the nineteenth century. I’m not likely to die in childbirth.”

“I don’t think you understand.”

“Leave me alone, Sam.”

Perhaps when she is at the top of the stairs, I can sneak up behind her and give her a push. I imagine her tumbling head over heels like a rag doll, the corners of steps jarring into tender flesh. No heartbeat. Having to carry that dead thing inside her womb for another week or two, then pushing it out, laboring to deliver a corpse into the world.

I shudder. Perhaps not.

But what if I nick her, just a bit, with a rusty blade, and she gets an infection, and that infection travels to the fetus, and …?

I imagine creeping up on her in the dark with an antique knife raised, and Elizabeth waking to find me there, a murderous phantasm come for her child. Samantha Wakefield, Killer of Infants, is what they will call me. And the people of Shadydale will whisper out of the corners of their mouths and tell the tale of the Mad Wakefields, insane killers all, with death in their blood.

No, there must be a better way. I spend my time brooding over the problem, waiting for inspiration, thrilled with terrible thoughts.

And then one morning, as I am grading papers, sipping coffee and pleased to be commenting with my lucky blue pen, there is a knock at the door.

I stop cold, dropping the pen midway through my sentence, angry that I have been interrupted. My heart thuds unhappily.

Elizabeth, who lounges on the couch opposite me here in the drawing room, absently flips the page of the magazine balanced on her enormous belly. “Be a dear and get that?” she says without looking up.

The knocking returns, a relentless rapping.

“What if it’s another Jehovah’s Witness?”

“Then thank him kindly for stopping and tear his brochure to shreds,” she says mildly, carelessly, and I wish she were the one to get up and check the door.

The essay will have to wait. I go to the door, and the knocking dies away as wood is pulled from knuckles.

Standing there, disheveled and desperate-eyed but trying to hide these things beneath a veneer of self-control, is—

“Donovan?”

A sweep of brown hair curls over his stubbled face.

“Sam,” he says brusquely, brushing me aside and looking around the foyer as if he will see Elizabeth hiding just behind the empty vase. “Where is she?”

“Don?” Elizabeth’s voice calls distantly from the drawing room.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

He looks at me strangely. “Your mother called me.”

“Is that Don?” Elizabeth calls again.

He takes a step forward, toward his wife’s elusive voice, but I move to block him. “Who said you could come inside?”