They’d called it the angel game.

Life is a circle, Hattie thought, tilting her head back to look up at the branches, where she could almost see the little girl that she was once climbing up, higher and higher, out of sight.

Someone shoved the stool out from under her.

Her body bucked, her feet kicked, searching frantically for something to rest on, to get the pressure off her neck.

She couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe.

Could only swing and twist, and for just a second, before she lost consciousness, she was sure she could see one of her old flower-head dolls drift down, its daisy face bright as the summer sun.

FOUNDATION

CHAPTER 1

Helen

MAY 18, 2015

The cement mixing drum turned. Fresh concrete poured down the truck’s chute into the form made from wood and rigid foam insulation that rested on a thick bed of gravel. The truck belched diesel fumes into the clean, pine-scented early-morning air.

We are meant to be here, Helen told herself, trying not to choke on the truck’s exhaust. It was eight o’clock in the morning. Normally, she’d be on her way in to work, or perhaps stopping for a latte, pretending she wasn’t a few minutes late. Instead, she was here, surrounded by trees and northern birds whose songs she didn’t recognize, watching workers pour her foundation.

The foundation was the one job she and Nate had hired out, and watching the men in their yellow boots, Helen was glad they’d left this one to the professionals. The men smoothed the concrete over rebar and mesh while Helen studied the scenery around her—the clearing they stood in, the thick woods encircling it, the hill to the west, the little path that led down to the bog to the south. Nate had argued that they could do the work, that a floating slab was easy, but Helen had insisted that a professionally laid out and poured foundation would give them the best start.

“If we’re off even by a quarter of an inch, it’ll screw things up big-time,” Helen had said. “Trust me. This is what the entire house is going to rest on. It’s got to be done right.”