The chorus of crying children and shouting parents seemed to billow around me as I bent down to Emily and rubbed her back. I scanned the yard for Jack, but he had already run down the street.

“I’m so sorry, honey. I’m so sorry that you had to see that,” I whispered. I placed an arm around her, and Mark and held tight.

Emily buried her head in Mark’s shoulder. “Who would do that?” she wailed.

“It’s not a who, honey. It was some kind of animal. Maybe a coyote or something like that. It’s awful, but it does happen. I’m so, so sorry,” I whispered again.

“But why?” she wailed.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my friends doing the same thing with their kids—hugging them, picking them up, wiping tears from their faces with a palm, rocking them back and forth.

“It is nature, Em. It’s really sad, but that’s how some animals eat—by eating other animals,” Mark said.

“But they were so small. They were just babies. Why couldn’t their mother protect them?” she said, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

“I don’t know,” Mark finally said, pulling her close again.

I took a deep breath and looked around, my hand still on top of Emily’s head. Most of the crowd was now dispersing, hysterical children in their arms. I heard whispers, promises of ice cream and special treats. Of toys bought from Amazon and trips to the neighborhood swimming pool. Of anything to calm their kids down.

Except for one.

Liz stood on the fringe of the crowd, her drink still in her hand. I didn’t see Tim and the children, but I assumed they were also headed back toward their house. Yet she remained. Her head slowly turned toward me, until our eyes locked. Hers widened for a moment before she slowly lifted her drink to her mouth and took a long sip. She wiped the corner of her mouth, and as she brought her red fingernails up to her face, they didn’t look like they were painted. From across the street, they looked bloody.

And then she smiled.

CHAPTER
6

Mom, where are my goggles?”

Jack stood in front of me, dripping wet, water pooling around his feet on the hot concrete. I sighed and fished into my pool bag, extracting the child equivalent of the Hope Diamond from the bag with two fingers. I wondered how many times, on average, per pool visit, I was asked to locate goggles. It had to be somewhere north of one billion.