I didn’t see anything was the text back.

I shook my head as I put my phone in my back pocket. Maybe I had imagined it. Maybe a car had pulled into a driveway down the street. A thousand things were possible. I didn’t want to press the issue and become one of the paranoid moms I saw on the Winchester Moms Facebook group, regularly posting about neighbors who didn’t clean up after their dogs, teenagers speeding down the street, or people who had cut them off in traffic. It was the worst kind of policing and one that didn’t do any good, just started fights on social media.

Years ago, I would have never imagined that I would live in a town that became embroiled in such petty drama so often. Mark and I had vowed we weren’t going to become those suburbanites who talked about mowing their lawn and tree-trimming services. No, we were much better than that—we were city people. Who took our kids to fancy restaurants and walked everywhere. Who shared one car that we barely drove and always knew where to get the best Indian takeout.

I was deeply aware of how uncool and boring the suburbs were. And yet I would soon come to find that our suburb was anything but mundane.

CHAPTER
4

The moment when the kitchen was finally clean after dinner and the dishwasher began to hum was always one of the best parts of my day. All that was left was bedtime. Although bedtime was usually an arduous epilogue that involved copious bribery and threats.

The dishwasher whirring behind him, Mark looked at me, Clorox wipe in hand, and sighed, his shoulders sagging.

“Done. Finally,” he said as he opened the garbage and tossed the wipe inside. He held an arm out, and I slid next to him in a side hug. He squeezed my shoulders, and I briefly closed my eyes. It had been another long day with the kids. Jack had fallen four times, and I had run out of Band-Aids, so I had to borrow some from Jess, who only had cupcake bandages, which was apparently a tragedy worthy of the national news.

“Want some pie? I hid the last two slices in the back of the fridge,” Mark said, and I nodded mutely into his chest. He turned and riffled around in the fridge, pulling out the leftover key lime pie. He extracted two pieces from the tin and presented one to me.

We sat down at the clean kitchen island, the kids in the other room playing hide-and-go-seek, and clinked our forks together.

“What day is it?” I said, and glanced at the calendar.