Cover

Dedication

For Ryan, Paige, and Jake

CHAPTER
1

None of this would have happened if it weren’t for the She Shed. We thought it would be a place to have our ladies’ nights in peace—away from the children waking up at midnight, away from the husbands giving a cursory wave before heading upstairs to watch sports in the dark, away from the dirty dishes piled in the sink. All we wanted was a place to call our own. To have something that belonged to us. What we got was our lives and homes ripped into bloody shreds.

It was the She Shed that started it all, a blissfully ignorant idea that transformed our cheery suburban enclave into something demonic.

The suburbs were hell . . . literally.

—

It all began in June, when we gathered at Liz Kowalski’s house for our monthly movie night. Well, we called it “movie night” but it was really just an excuse to get together on a semiregular basis. Something to look forward to during the monotony.

My next-door neighbor, Jess, and I arrived at Liz’s house around the corner at the same time, each of us taking a different route on Maple Leaf Drive.

“Yo, Amy, I did wind sprints out of my house tonight. Shit, I need a night out more than anything.” Jess wore white workout shorts and a tight tank top and held a bottle of tequila above her head as she walked up the pathway to Liz’s house. Her blond hair flowed freely down her back, and in the dark, her six-foot frame stretched a long shadow in the automatic lights on either side of Liz’s door. Jess’s husband, Del, worked for a liquor distributor and always had high-end bottles of alcohol on hand, which made her very popular at parties.

“You do know this is a wine night, not spring break in Cancún, right?” I said as I eyed her bottle of tequila while hitching my sauvignon blanc into my armpit. I had found it on sale in an endcap at Target. I grabbed it out of impulse as I sped through, trying to buy the ingredients for dinner and new water shoes for my two kids before someone had a meltdown.

Jess frowned as we reached Liz’s door. “It’s George Clooney’s tequila, not Jose Cuervo. And Del told me that tequila has less sugar than any other alcohol.”

“Yes, I obviously attend these nights to watch my weight,” I said as she pushed open Liz’s door.

“Well, I have CrossFit at eight tomorrow morning, and I can’t be hungover. Hey, do you want to join? It’s Bring-a-Friend Day.”