Dear Kristi,

I’m so sorry, honey. Believe me when I tell you that I love you more than life itself. But I’ve been involved with the man who is your biological father again, and I’m afraid it’s going to break Rick’s heart.

And blah, blah, blah…

What a bunch of melodramatic crap.

Again she thought she heard something…the sound of a footstep on the floor downstairs.

She started to call out, then held her tongue. Padding quietly to the top of the stairs, she held on to the railing and listened. Over the smooth rotation of the fan in her bedroom she heard another noise, something faint and clicking.

Her skin crawled.

She barely dared breathe. Her heart pounded in her ears.

Just your imagination—the guilt that’s eating at you.

Or the neighbor’s cat. That’s it, the scraggly thing that’s always rooting around in the garbage cans or searching for mice in the garage.

On stealthy footsteps she hurried to the bedroom window and peered through the glass, seeing nothing out of the ordinary on this gray day in Southern California, where the air was foggy, dusty, and thick. Even the sun, a reddish disc hanging low in the sky over miles and miles of rooftops, appeared distorted by the smog.

Not the breath of a breeze from the ocean today, nothing stirring to make any kind of noise. No cat slinking beneath the dry bushes, no bicyclist on the street. Not even a car passing.

It’s nothing.

Just a case of nerves.

Calm down.

She poured the remains of the shaker into her glass and took a sip on her way to the bathroom. But in the doorway she caught sight of her reflection and felt another stab of guilt.

“Bottoms up,” she whispered and then, seeing her own reflection and the glass lifted to her lips, she cringed. This wasn’t what she wanted for her life. For her daughter. “Stupid, stupid bitch!” The woman in the mirror seemed to laugh at her. Taunt her. Without thinking, Jennifer hurled her drink at her smirking reflection. The glass slammed into the mirror, shattering.

Crraaack!

Slowly, the mirror split, a spider web of flaws crawling over the slivered glass. Shards slipped into the sink.

“Jesus!”

What the hell have you done?

She tried to pick up one of the larger pieces and sliced the tip of her finger, blood dripping from her hand, drizzling into the sink. Quickly she found a single, loose Band-Aid on the shelf in the cabinet. She had trouble as her fingers weren’t working as they should, but she managed to pull off the backing and wrap her index finger. Yet she couldn’t quite stanch the flow. Blood swelled beneath the tiny scrap of plastic and gauze. “Damn it all to hell,” she muttered and caught a glimpse of her face in one of the remaining jagged bits of mirror.