Chapter 2
For one second, none of us moved.
The freezer hummed.
Jack made a sound like his heart had broken open.
“Mom?”
Lucy’s eyes filled with tears.
I rushed forward and pulled the tape from her mouth as gently as I could.
She gasped.
“Jack.”
He fell to his knees beside her.
I cut the ties with a knife from the prep table.
My hands shook so badly I almost dropped it.
Diane backed toward the kitchen door.
I turned.
“Don’t.”
She froze.
Lucy clutched Jack with weak arms.
“He saved me,” she whispered.
I looked at Diane.
“What did you do?”
Diane’s mouth opened.
Nothing came.
Then she tried the old face.
The wounded one.
The one that had made me trust her after Lucy vanished.
“Mark, listen to me.”
“No.”
“Lucy is unstable. You know that.”
I stared at my ex-wife’s bruised wrists.
“She was in your freezer.”
“She came here tonight. She attacked me.”
Lucy shook her head.
“She kept me in the storage room first.”
My blood went cold.
“Seven months?”
Lucy swallowed.
“Not always here.”
Jack started sobbing.
I called 911.
Diane screamed at me to stop.
Then she grabbed for the phone.
I shoved her back.
“You told me Lucy ran away.”
“She did,” Diane cried. “She left you. She left him. I only tried to protect you.”
Lucy looked at me then.
Her eyes held pain so deep I could barely stand.
“I called you,” she whispered. “So many times.”
My legs almost gave out.
I had changed my number after Diane said Lucy was harassing us.
Diane had handled it.
Diane had comforted Jack.
Diane had cooked dinners.
Diane had stood beside me in court when Lucy missed custody hearings.
Because Lucy was tied up somewhere.
Because Diane made sure she could not come.
Police sirens wailed outside.
Jack held his mother tighter.
He looked at me through tears.
“You said she left.”
I could not breathe.
“I was wrong.”
Diane whispered, “Mark, please.”
I looked at the woman I had planned to marry.
May you like
Then at the mother of my child shaking on a freezer floor.
“You don’t get please anymore.”
