“Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith!” Ree flung her arms around the copper-orange beast, squeezing so hard, Mr. Smith howled in protest.

Then, just as quickly, she let him go, threw herself to the floor and burst into tears. “But I want Mommy!” she wailed plaintively. “I want Mama!”

Jason lowered himself to the floor. He pulled his daughter onto his lap. He stroked her dark curly hair and held her while she wept.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I cheated on Jason for the first time when Ree was eleven months old. I couldn’t take it anymore. The sleepless nights, the exhausting ritual of feeding, tending, diapering, feeding, tending, diapering. I’d already registered for online college courses and it seemed any minute I wasn’t tending a baby, I was writing a paper, researching a subject, trying to recall high school math.

I felt both incredibly drained and unbelievably tense. Edgy, like my skin was on too tight, or my scalp was squeezing my brain. I found myself noticing everything from the silky feel of Ree’s pink baby blanket to the needle-sharp pain of hot shower spray stinging my breasts.

Worse, I could feel the darkness growing inside my head. Until I could smell the cloying scent of decaying roses in every corner of my own home, and I dreaded falling asleep because I knew I’d only bolt awake to the sound of my mother’s voice warbling down the hall, “I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know….”

One day, I caught myself at the kitchen sink, scrubbing my hands with a wire-bristled brush. I was trying to erase my own fingerprints, trying to scour the DNA right out of my skin. And it occurred to me that’s what the darkness was—my mother, my own mother, taking root inside my head.

There are some people that just killing once will never be enough.

I told Jason I needed to get away. Twenty-four hours. Maybe a hotel where I could crash for a bit, order room service, catch my breath. I produced a brochure for a downtown spa by the Four Seasons and its menu of treatments. Everything was ridiculously expensive, but I knew Jason wouldn’t deny me, and he didn’t.

He took a Friday and Saturday off, to be with Clarissa.

“Don’t rush home,” he told me. “Take your time. Relax. I understand, Sandy. I do.”

So I went off to a four-hundred-a-night hotel room, where I used my spa money to hit Newbury Street and buy one micro mini suede skirt, black Kate Spade stiletto heels, and a silver sequined halter top that did not permit one to wear a bra. Then I hit the Armani Bar, and worked my way from there.