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Back The Mother Next Door Save as PDF
Chapters (84)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Dedication
  4. About the Author
  5. HALLOWEEN
  6. Seven Weeks Before Halloween
  7. ONE
  8. TWO
  9. THREE
  10. HALLOWEEN
  11. Six Weeks Before Halloween
  12. FOUR
  13. FIVE
  14. SIX
  15. HALLOWEEN
  16. Five Weeks Before Halloween
  17. SEVEN
  18. EIGHT
  19. HALLOWEEN
  20. NINE
  21. TEN
  22. HALLOWEEN
  23. ELEVEN
  24. TWELVE
  25. Twenty-Five Days Until Halloween
  26. THIRTEEN
  27. FOURTEEN
  28. HALLOWEEN
  29. FIFTEEN
  30. SIXTEEN
  31. SEVENTEEN
  32. EIGHTEEN
  33. NINETEEN
  34. TWENTY
  35. HALLOWEEN
  36. Eighteen Days Until Halloween
  37. TWENTY-ONE
  38. TWENTY-TWO
  39. HALLOWEEN
  40. TWENTY-THREE
  41. TWENTY-FOUR
  42. Eleven Days Until Halloween
  43. TWENTY-FIVE
  44. TWENTY-SIX
  45. Eight Days Until Halloween
  46. TWENTY-SEVEN
  47. TWENTY-EIGHT
  48. TWENTY-NINE
  49. HALLOWEEN
  50. THIRTY
  51. Four Days Until Halloween
  52. THIRTY-ONE
  53. HALLOWEEN
  54. THIRTY-TWO
  55. Two Days Until Halloween
  56. THIRTY-THREE
  57. The Night Before Halloween
  58. THIRTY-FOUR
  59. HALLOWEEN
  60. THIRTY-FIVE
  61. Halloween, Present Day
  62. THIRTY-SIX
  63. THIRTY-SEVEN
  64. HALLOWEEN
  65. THIRTY-EIGHT
  66. HALLOWEEN
  67. THIRTY-NINE
  68. HALLOWEEN
  69. FORTY
  70. HALLOWEEN
  71. FORTY-ONE
  72. FORTY-TWO
  73. FORTY-THREE
  74. FORTY-FOUR
  75. HALLOWEEN... NOW
  76. FORTY-FIVE
  77. Seven Months Later
  78. FORTY-SIX
  79. FORTY-SEVEN
  80. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  81. ALICE SWANSON’S
  82. Reader's Guide
  83. Questions for Discussion
  84. Booklist

I sighed. “Jackie got it wrong, Alice. Daphne never...she was never with Greg. Jackie didn’t realize it until it was too late, when he was still cheating a month after Daphne died. She never told me who he was really cheating with. Just that he had her babysit a few times when Daphne wasn’t available.”

At that point, I hadn’t cared. I didn’t want to know anything else about the situation, not after the mess it had all caused. But now I knew. It had been Theresa. All the signs had been there. The way she hadn’t met my eye when I’d asked if they’d been involved. And Greg Hendricks wouldn’t have done a favor like that for just anyone—there had to be something between them for him to have helped with Adam’s job. I was an idiot not to have seen it sooner.

“What?” Alice asked. She was too stunned to even be mad I’d never told her. “So he was carryin’ on with both of them?”

I shook my head. “No. Daphne was just a kid, had been through so much. We should’ve seen it then. Greg’s a jerk, but not that much of a jerk. That’s why Jackie lost her head. Because when he told her he was never involved with Daphne, she couldn’t handle that she’d fucked it all up.”

“But wait,” Bettina said. “I still don’t get how you know it was Theresa?”

“I met her before,” I said. “A very long time ago.”

I told them about the day I’d been with Cole and Sam at the playground by the lake. It had been the summer before everything happened. Hot. The flowers were blooming.

Which was why it was so strange that the babysitter hadn’t had her EpiPen with her when she’d been stung.

Can you help? she’d asked, young and frazzled. Ellen—they used to call her Nora back then—had seemed both frightened and excited by the unexpected adventure as I’d driven them to the urgent clinic.

Theresa’s hair had been longer and not red. But it had been her. “She’s always been familiar to me in some visceral way,” I said. A random babysitter, filling in for Daphne, hardly memorable at all if not for the emergency.

Pia puffed on her cigarette and blew smoke into the air. “Fuck.”

“So Theresa sent us all those messages?” Alice asked.

“I don’t know. But she’s hiding something.” I paused, remembering the look in Theresa’s eye when she asked me where Lily was. “Just now at the party, she told me she thought Jackie was ‘after’ her.”

“Oh please,” Bettina muttered.