She imagined Ava asleep in her bed, dreaming to the sound of soft rain. The memory morphed into others. Instead of her own life flashing before her eyes, Melissa saw her daughter as a swaddled baby, lips stretched into a smile from passed gas. She pictured her as a grinning toddler, feet racing to keep up with the forward momentum of an oversized blond head, and, later, as a hammy elementary schooler sing-shouting her heart out in the school production.

Melissa recalled her kid more recently, Ava’s face melding into some version of her own, though with a fierceness and confidence that Melissa had never possessed. She pictured that beautiful visage morphing into openmouthed terror when she saw her father’s body.

Melissa considered herself an atheist, but the adage was true. Nonbelievers didn’t exist in foxholes—or in the dark. She prayed to the God of her childhood, unsure whether her eyes were closed or open. “Please don’t let Ava go downstairs,” she whispered. “Please let someone else find him. Please let her go to school without seeing.”

Beyond that, Melissa didn’t know what to ask for. A doorway? Light? It didn’t seem possible that God could grant such requests. If he could, then why was she in here? What punishment was she serving, and for which crime?

Would those sins be visited upon her child?

Imani would pick Ava up, Melissa realized. In her mind, she could see her friend striding into St. Catherine’s, gathering Ava in her arms, pretending to have it all together. Imani had been getting better at that. Pretending.

She’d taught Imani to play a part too well. What role would she take with her daughter?

CHAPTER THREE

IMANI

They were already arguing. From her curled position on the couch, Imani could hear her two o’clock warming up for their weekly verbal wrestling match. The strip of drywall separating her office from the hallway couldn’t muffle the condescension in the husband’s tone or the hysterical notes in the wife’s as each attempted to force the other into apologetic submission.

“But you don’t know,” the woman snapped. “Why do you always assume to know everything?”

“It’s a logical conclusion that any thinking person would come to,” the man responded.

Imani pulled up the surgical mask cupping her chin. She hated how face coverings complicated reading patients’ expressions. However, she appreciated that the fabric would cover her own downturned lips.