There was a pause—a long pause—during which he had to remind himself to breathe. He fantasized for a brief second that today would be a repeat of last time; that she would not respond and want him to burst in, and she would be naked and waiting. Then she spoke, and the fantasy evaporated.

“Leave it. Thank you.”

The same short response he had heard for weeks … months … years. She had the same tone, inflection and utter lack of connection. It was as if it had never happened, as if she had never been naked beneath him, as if they had never kissed, caressed, thought about doing more. He stood there, tongue-tied, the small package in his hand.

“I thought maybe … “ his sentence died abruptly, and he wet his lips and tried again. “I—”

“Leave it. Thank you.” Same tone. Same inflection.

He set the package down, scrawled her name with slow strokes, and tried to think. Then he turned and walked to the elevator, glancing back twice at her closed door.

I stand at the door, my eye to the peephole, watching his handsome profile as it turns, pauses, and then continues. My body twitches, a battle raging. Need driving my core. Need for interaction, for his touch, and for his blood. My hand shaking, I loosen my grip, and the knife drops harmlessly to the floor, the sound loud in my empty apartment.

I sob, the sound bursting uncontrollably out of me and sink to the floor. There, against the hard door, I allow myself one brief moment of tears.

Self-pity. Millicent Fenwick describes it as a terrible squirrel cage of self. For me, it is a futile waste of time. I breathe, suck it up, and stand, wiping tears and heading back to my pink bed of distraction.

Unbeknownst to me, Annie has only six hours of freedom left.

CHAPTER 34: The Night

At 10:50 p.m., I parked two houses down from ours, in front of a neighbor’s house. Turning off my car, I grabbed my keys from the ignition and got out, softly closing the car door. I wore workout shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops. Our street was well developed, the lots spread far apart, stately homes separated by paved drives and detached garages. I walked quickly down the sidewalk, past the dark homes of our neighbors, and turned down our driveway, headed for the exterior door of our garage. I glanced up at our house, seeing lights on. I frowned. Mom was a stickler about Trent and Summer going to sleep by nine. Everyone should be upstairs, asleep or getting into bed. I crouched over, jogging softly down the sidewalk that ran by our back door and turned the knob to the garage, opening the door and slipping into the dark space.

I hit my shin on something, and bit my lip to keep from crying out. The pain was intense, throbbing, and I reached down and rubbed the spot, praying that it wouldn’t blossom into a bruise. I felt around with my hands, until I felt Mom’s car—always parked in the left spot—and walked down its side until I reached the back door. Opening it activated the dome light, and I saw the turquoise bag on the floorboard, sharing the space with a Dunkin Donuts box. I reached out and grabbed the bag, sliding my hand inside and double-checking that the dress was still there. Yep. Good, now I just needed to get the hell out. My heart beating loudly against my chest, I pressed the car door shut, bumping it with my hip until the interior light went out. Then I felt my way back to the garage door and opened it, slipping back out into the night air. I was hunched over again, making my way past our home’s back door, when I heard the muffled, but distinct, sound of a scream.

The scream came from inside our home—a horrible, gut wrenching sound that started out powerful and terrifying and then died, winding it’s way down to a gurgle that was muffled completely by the house. I froze, mid-crouch, and turned my head toward the door. The bag dropped at my feet. Something was wrong.

We were a light-hearted family, always playing tricks on each other, always horsing around if there was the slightest opportunity. But that sound—that scream—it changed everything in an instant. It was, as non-descriptive as the word may be, real. Every ounce of hope, peace and normalcy left my body in that one instance. I straightened to my full height and walked to the back door, breathing hard, and looked through the glass window of the door.

My first thought was that Mom had redecorated. Put up a horrible wallpaper of sorts, some kind of feng shui nonsense that had paint splatters as a pattern. Then I saw Summer, her body slumped over the table, her dark hair—just like mine—stuck in the pool of blood that surrounded her head. Not paint. Blood. Summer’s blood. I moved my head, slow with incomprehension, to the right. Trent. Sitting next to Summer at the table, his hand still resting on his placemat, a plate with two cookies in front of him. Half of his head missing—fragments of skin ending in nothing. I grabbed the back doorknob, turned it listlessly, my head in a fog, my subconscious screaming a long, slow scream of death.

The knob, which should have been locked—everything was wrong—turned smoothly in my hand and the door swung open. I moved forward, moving around the door so that I could see the rest of the end of my life.

She straddled him as he sat at the head of the table—his normal place—the place that society always dictates a father should sit. I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see past the curls of her perfect hair, the hair that always framed her face. She was busy, her head shaking, words muttering, her arms jerking and moving incessantly. Busy with whatever she was doing to him. I walked, my fingers reached out as I passed Summer’s chair, then Trent’s. My hands itched to hold them, touch them, make them live again. I was at the angle where I could see my father’s face, see it dull and lifeless, gray with death, when she screamed.