Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
It was a quarter past three when I let myself into the apartment. The new key slid in like a secret; the tumblers turned with a whisper. She’d swapped the locks after the last time, but it’s amazing how easy it is to get another copy if you know the right people and the right lies. I waited a moment in the corridor, testing the air for movement, a snore, a TV muttering to itself in another room. Nothing. Not even the traffic from outside. The whole world seemed to pause, holding its breath for me.
The living room was exactly how she always kept it, neat but not tidy, a museum display designed to fool the casual observer into believing the illusion of order. Framed photographs in matching black, sofa cushions precisely arranged, coffee table wiped clean but streaked with some chemical’s residue if you looked close enough. I made a point not to touch anything as I moved, gliding in the half-light that bled in around the blinds. The door to the master bedroom was closed. She had left it unlocked.
I pushed it open and stepped in. My shoes made no sound against the plush carpet, and for a moment I just stood there, watching. She was asleep on her side, an arm thrown up, the hair on her pillow in the same artful tangle she’d sported since I was a kid. Only then it was rich chestnut, now it was salt-and-pepper, and there was more skin around her jaw and eyes than I remembered. I saw the faint rise and fall of her ribcage, the way her lips parted as she dreamed. For a second, I was a child again, and she was just my mother. Fear curled in my belly. Angry at my weakness, I locked away all of my feelings behind walls of rage. Then I flicked the switch on the wall.
The room detonated in cold, surgical brightness. She jerked upright like I’d hit her with a cattle prod, arms flailing, lips parted in a hoarse, unformed cry. Her hands snatched blindly for the glasses on her nightstand, betraying just how deep she’d been sleeping. I watched her fumble, the lenses catching the overhead light as she struggled to fit them on, her fingers stiff with panic. I could see each stage of her confusion as it passed across her face: the initial shot of fear, raw and animal, then the rationalizing, the desperate hope that I was some other shape in the doorway, and finally the instant of recognition. My mother’s eyes, blue and watery, locked onto mine.