Chapter 1 - The Door Across the Living Room
Ethan heard Lily scream his name before he understood what he was seeing.
“DADDY!”
Guests in evening clothes stepped aside.
Lily and Noah were huddled on the living-room floor beside the coffee table. Lily had one arm around her younger brother. Both children were crying.
Claire stood over them in her wine-red dress.
A wooden clothes hanger was raised in her hand.
The instant she saw Ethan, she lowered it.
Ethan crossed the room.
His anger broke through before Claire could speak. He struck her across the face, and when she reeled toward the edge of the table, the wooden hanger fell from her hand and clattered onto the marble.
The guests gasped.
Ethan immediately turned away from Claire and dropped beside the children.
Lily buried her face against his suit.
Noah clung to his shoulder.
“What happened?”
Claire touched her cheek.
“They were being so naughty.”
Lily jerked her head up.
“No!”
She pointed first at the hanger.
Then at the coffee table.
Several envelopes and opened documents lay scattered there.
Claire’s expression changed.
Ethan noticed.
He moved toward them.
Claire grabbed his wrist.
“Leave those.”
Ethan pulled free.
Behind him Lily shouted:
“She found them in Mom’s room!”
Everything inside Ethan seemed to stop.
Their mother’s room had been locked since Claire told the children she had died three months earlier.
Ethan picked up the first envelope.
It was addressed to him.
The return address belonged to St. Matthew Rehabilitation Center.
A place he knew.
Because that was where his wife, Rachel, had been sent after the accident.
The accident Claire claimed had eventually killed her.
Ethan looked at Claire.
She said nothing.
Her eyes moved instead toward the closed wooden door across the living room.
A soft thud came from behind it.
Every guest turned.
Lily gripped Ethan’s sleeve.
“Dad... she told us Mom was dead.”
Another thud.
Claire stepped backward.
“Ethan, don’t open that door.”
He approached.
His hand closed around the knob.
Then from the other side came a faint female voice.
“Ethan...?”
Lily gasped.
“Mom?”
Ethan stopped breathing.
The voice came again.
Weak.
Familiar.
“Ethan, please.”
He yanked the handle.
Locked.
Behind him Claire whispered:
“You don’t understand.”
Ethan slowly turned.
For three months he had been grieving his wife.
May you like
His children had cried themselves to sleep believing their mother was gone.
And now Rachel’s voice was coming from a locked room inside his own house.
