As Mark put the kids to bed, I looked over the cards again, smiling. Yet a stillness ran through me as I studied Emily’s a second time. She had drawn our house in the background, a simple box with a triangle roof. In the upper right-hand corner was a black circle that I hadn’t noticed before. She had filled it in with black, pressing the crayon so hard that I could see flakes of wax ground into the paper. An angry black hole.

In the location of Liz’s house.

CHAPTER
10

Don’t touch that!” I called across the enormous table of books at the library, begging Jack not to upend the collection of Transformers a local kid had loaned to the library for display. I had visions of having to scour eBay auctions in order to reimburse an eight-year-old.

Mark was in Miami, and my leg still wasn’t up to snuff, and there were only so many activities to do outside in the heat, so we’d packed up and gone to the library. Emily made a beeline for the play area with the plastic kitchen and ice-cream cart, and Jack pulled books off the shelf and sat down in a kid chair while I settled into the couch, moving carefully.

Within seconds, I was sweating. The air-conditioning was on, but the mercury had already soared to ninety-five degrees, and freon could only do so much in the aging building. There was condensation on the inside of the door and windows. And I was wearing long gray yoga pants to cover up my bandage. It was too much effort to determine what version of the story I wanted to tell curious neighbors, and after my experience at urgent care, I didn’t think anyone wanted to hear about our landscaping in minute detail.

I was glad for my foresight when I saw Heather Hacker walk through the library doors, flanked by her two kids. Remy and Ruby were six and eight years old, dressed in identical pink-and-green Lilly Pulitzer dresses. Heather wore a headband with the same matching pattern and a spotless white maxidress. She spotted me, and her face lit up. Normally, I would have quickly stood up and feigned being late for something, but I was stuck. Like a bear in a forest trap, but I couldn’t chew off my own leg to escape.

“There you are, Amy! I haven’t seen you in forever. How are things?” She plopped down next to me and clasped her manicured hands on her knee. She studied me, her head tilting to the side in concern as I saw her gaze move to my hairline, where I could feel beads of sweat appearing.