Merda! This wasn’t the first passive-aggressive note I’d received from a woman, but my heart sank as I jumped to the conclusion it was from Robin. She must know. Was it Grant who confessed? Or Willow telling her what she saw? Whoever it was, I had to get ahead of it if there was any chance I could fix things. I knew mending the friendship would never be possible, but I could take all the blame, say I seduced Grant, at least save their marriage. Give their family a fighting chance.

Unless it wasn’t Robin. It didn’t look like her handwriting, but if it wasn’t her, then who? I had no enemies of late . . . none that I knew of, at least.

Placing the note on my kitchen counter, I felt its hate, then the unfamiliar sting of tears. I tasted the foreign tang of mourning. I hadn’t cried once since Tony left me, but suddenly my emotions and sadness and grief were alive and kicking.

I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore. My eyes stung, my throat was sticky, my body ached from heaving sobs. I fell back into bed face-first, dulling the brightness of the streetlight outside my window with my pillow. Maybe I could suffocate all the sorrow away.

As my bedroom faded into a black haze, I wondered how I would move forward from here. There was only one way to smother the worry and fear churning in my skull, one way to pull the plug on my life support: tell Robin everything, then watch helplessly as all of our lives imploded.

Chapter 11

Mackenzie

MONDAY

I’ve never feared death, even as a child. Instead, I fear life. Life is much more horrifying and soul-shredding and cruel than death could ever be. But this fear had never felt more real, more alive, than it did right now.

I sat silently in Aria’s room as the dawn broke through her semi-closed window blinds. Watching her sleep took me back to a time when things were much simpler. I had thought her bedwetting days were the worst it could get. Night after night she’d wake up covered in pee soaking her pink horsey bedspread and Scooby-Doo pajamas. Every night, no matter what time I cut off drinks or how many times I made her pee in the potty before bed, the whole house would shudder awake as her cries drifted to my bedroom. And every night I’d change the reeking sheets and cuddle her back to sleep for another couple of hours until dawn.

This is the worst of it, I’d thought back then with sleep-deprived certainty. It’ll get easier as she gets older.