Chapter 1
I'd known Lorna for a little over a year when I proposed, and in that year, she'd been careful — I understand that now in a way I didn't at the time — about exactly how much of herself she let me see. She was warm with Estelle in the moments I was around to witness, attentive in the specific way that reads as genuine affection until you have reason to look at it more closely. I'd told myself, more than once, that I was lucky. That finding someone willing to step into a ready-made family, six years after my wife died and left me raising a daughter mostly on my own with Lenette's help, was rarer than I had any right to expect.
I came home early that Thursday because a meeting had ended ahead of schedule, and I walked through my own front door into a scene I still can't fully describe without my hands going cold. Estelle was on her knees on the entryway tile, surrounded by the shattered remains of what I'd later learn was a full set of dishes, Lenette positioned between her and Lorna with one arm thrown protectively across my daughter's small shoulders.
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"Why is my daughter on her knees?" I asked, and even as the words left me, I understood I was asking the wrong question first, that there were a dozen other questions that mattered more, but that was the one that came out.
Estelle scrambled up and ran to me, sobbing hard enough that it took her a moment to get any words out at all. I held her, one arm wrapped around her small frame, and looked past her at Lorna, waiting for an explanation that would make sense of what I was seeing.
