I listen as, from the adjoining wall, the laughter of Graham and his latest ladylove drift through the drywall to greet me, the tone of her voice—flirty and insincere—indicative of a brief dalliance and nothing more. Graham’s specialty. I watch as Willow’s eyes rise up from the book to listen, to listen to the kittenish laughter and the shrill tone of voice, and as they intersect mine, as those icy blue eyes cut through my own jittery orbs, I find myself looking away quickly, considering the ochre bruise and wondering what it would take for someone like Willow to snap. How much maltreatment and exploitation someone could handle before losing self-control.

I cannot look at her, into those eyes that threaten me. I stare at the white walls, instead, a framed photo collage of Chris and Zoe and me, black-and-white photographs in wooden frames, the cats in theirs, the word family carved from fiberboard, handpainted and hung in the middle of the display.

I pat at the pocket of my purple robe and feel for the Swiss Army knife inside.

A precaution. I heed Chris’s warning: How much can you really know about another person?

And then the baby does start to stir, her eyelids flutter and there’s a flicker of the hand, but it’s Willow—not me—with her lightning-fast reflexes who reaches the baby first and lifts her from the floor in that rickety way that she does, her arms shaky, her grasp insecure so that for a fraction of a second, or more, I’m certain Ruby will fall. I feel myself rise and step forward to catch the plummeting child, but then Willow’s eyes stop me in my tracks, staring at me, smug, taking great delight in my distress. Ha! those eyes mock me, and I beat you, as if she knew all along that I was waiting. Waiting ever so patiently to hold the baby. To hold that beautiful baby in my arms when she awoke from sleep.

I lift a hand to my mouth to stifle a scream that threatens to emerge from somewhere deep within.

“Are you okay?” she asks me, as she returns to the chair, bundling Ruby in the pink blanket. And then, when I don’t respond fast enough, she asks again, “ma’am?”

My hand drops from my gaping mouth to my splintered heart and I lie, “yes, just fine,” finding that lying is so easy to do as an air of serenity disguises my turbulent state, the tempestuous clouds that roll in before a storm.

I’m aware suddenly of the TV in the bedroom, blaringly loud. The reality show has broken for commercial, and suddenly we are being screamed at, chided and admonished, to buy some sort of fabric softener which smells of eucalyptus leaves. It enrages me; the sound of it, loud and emphatic, might wake Zoe from sleep. I curse it out loud, that damned commercial, I curse the TV and the network and the eucalyptus fabric softener which I will never buy. I march down the hall to turn the TV off, pressing power so vehemently that the TV slides two inches or more on the console, scratching the wall. Behind me, in the queen-size bed, beneath the matelassé comforter, Zoe rolls over onto a side, her hands still clutching the remote control though she sleeps.

She lets out a sleepy sigh.

My heart drums loudly in my chest, overwhelmed by that sense of being completely out of control. Powerless. On the verge of going mad. As I stand there, in the bedroom, staring at the blank TV screen, I feel overcome by a sudden wave of nausea, my legs turn to jelly and, for one split second, I’m certain I’ve gone into cardiac arrest.

I inch into the bathroom as blackness sweeps across my eyes like window cleaner splashed on a dirty pane. I drop onto the edge of the bathtub and set my head beneath my legs, forcing the blood back up to my brain.

And then I reach for the faucet and turn the water on so that Zoe, if she awakes from her anesthetized doze, will not hear me cry.

And that’s when I see it: the filigree bird painted a distressed red, the shabby chic hook on the wall. An extra hole, poorly plastered and painted, a reminder that when Chris hung the hook, he hung it askew.

I purchased the hook from a flea market in Kane County, on a road trip Jennifer and I made some six, maybe, seven years ago. The forty-some miles out of the city and to St. Charles was the closest either of us had been to a vacation in years. As Jennifer and I scoured through antiques and collectibles for things we didn’t need, the girls, Zoe and Taylor, rode behind in a red wagon, stuffing themselves with hot dogs and popcorn to stay quiet and satisfied.

The hook, completely bare.

I grope at my neck but come up empty, as I knew with certainty I would do, for I recall hanging the chain—the golden chain with my father’s wedding band, the words The beginning of forever engraved along its inside—from the filigree bird before I kissed Zoe on the forehead good-night. Before I left the bedroom—dimming the lights—and returned to the kitchen to clean pots and pans that awaited me on the cooling stove. Before I gathered the foul-smelling plastic bag from the garbage can and marched it down the hall to the chute. Before I settled down with my laptop to type meaningless words onto the screen, waiting fruitlessly for Ruby to stir.

She has taken my father’s wedding ring.

All at once, it’s as if he’s died again, my father. I’m teleported to the morning my mother phoned from their Cleveland home. He’d been sick for months and so it should have come as no surprise to me, the fact that he was dead. And yet the news of it, the very words slipping from my mother’s tongue, her tone newsy rather than sorrowful—he’s dead—completely bowled me over, left me stupefied. For weeks I went on believing it was a mistake, a misunderstanding, certainly this couldn’t be true. There was the funeral and the burial, of course, and I watched as some man resembling my father—but cold and rubbery, his features pliable and strange—was lowered into the ground, and then, like the dutiful daughter I was, I tossed my roses on top of the casket because it was what my mother carried when they were wed. Lavender roses.

Though I believed in my heart of hearts it wasn’t my father inside that box.

I tried phoning him each and every day, my father, worried when he didn’t answer his cell phone. From time to time my mother would answer, and in her kindest, gentlest voice she’d say, “Heidi, dear, you can’t keep calling like this,” and when I continued to call, she suggested to me, to Chris, that I see someone, someone who could help me sort through my grief. But I refused.

As I refused to see someone—a counselor, a shrink—as the ob-gyn suggested I do after he killed Juliet, after he appropriated my womb.

It’s nearing ten o’clock in New York City. I call Chris from a cell phone stashed in my pocket, to tell him that Willow has stolen from me, and yet his cell phone rings and rings without an answer.

I wait ten minutes and then try again, knowing that Chris is a night owl, and so he is certainly awake, certainly slaving away on some offering memorandum that he swore he’d be writing.

Or so he said.

When again there is no response, I text a message: Call me. ASAP. And proceed to wait futilely for twenty minutes or more.

And then I begin to seethe.

I search online for a phone number for the Manhattan hotel and put in a call, asking reception to transfer me to Chris Wood’s room. I whisper for Zoe’s sake, and she asks me more than once to repeat myself. There’s a pause as the woman tries to make the connection, but then she comes back on the line and says apologetically, “There’s no answer in that room, ma’am. Would you like to leave a message?”

I hang up the phone.

I consider calling again and asking to be transferred to Cassidy Knudsen’s room.

I consider a red-eye flight out to New York, a surprise appearance in the lobby of his hotel, desperate to catch him and Cassidy flitting about, laughing at some joke the rest of the world is not privy to. I see Cassidy in her hotel-issued robe, Chris in his, champagne delivered via room service, and strawberries. Yes, of course, strawberries.