Chapter One
It’s early May, a couple of monthsbefore the fatal events of that sultry summer night, and the clock radio in Maggie McKay’s bedroom wakes her up at sixa.m., as it has every weekday morning since the school year began. She reaches across the empty half of the king-size bed to the nightstand and silences the cloying strains of “Oh, what a beautiful morning” with a decisive slap of her hand before the refrain can repeat.
Probably she should move the radio to the nightstand onherside of the bed so she won’t have to stretch so far. At the very least, she should reprogram the alarm to play another tune. She’s come to hate that stupid song. She doesn’t need reminding that Florida is the land of beautiful mornings. She hates it anyway.
But she doesn’t move the radio and she doesn’t reprogram the tune. And she probably won’t. Because there have been enough changes in her life lately. Too many.
The music was Craig’s idea. A gentler way to wake them up each morning than the shrill beeping jolting them into consciousness. Her nerves were frayed enough as it was, he reminded her unnecessarily. What she needed, he said, was less stress. Whatheneeded, hedidn’tsay—maybe wasn’t even aware of at the time—was less Maggie.
Not that she blamed him for their marriage falling apart, at least not entirely. The move to Palm Beach Gardens had been her idea. A new beginning, she’d told him when she first championed the idea of uprooting their family, abandoning their home, leaving their friends and their careers behind in Los Angeles, and moving across the country. It would be a fresh start. A new beginning. Better for everyone.
Virtually the same words Craig used when he’d packed up his personal belongings and moved out three months ago. “I’m sorry, Maggie,” he added, managing to look as if he meant it. “I just can’t do it anymore.”
“Fuck you,” she mutters now, pretty much the first words out of her mouth every morning since he left. “Fucking coward.” She rolls back to her side of the bed, the sheets cool beneath the flimsy cotton of her pajamas, and opens the top drawer of the mirrored nightstand beside the pillow. Her hand feels for the cold, smooth surface of the compact Glock 19, secreted beneath a chiffon swirl of multicolored scarves. The 9mm handgun is by far the most popular handgun in the United States, due to its size and reliability. Or so said the salesman who sold it to her the same afternoon that Craig moved out.
Craig had been adamant about not having a gun in the house, despite everything that had happened. Despite, God forbid, everything thatcouldhappen, and probablywouldhappen the minute they became too complacent, she’d argued to no avail.If you’d really wanted to reduce my stress level,she thinks as she lifts the relatively lightweight gun into her hands,this little guy would have done a much better job of relaxing me than that stupid song from an old Broadway musical.
But it’s a classic,she can hear him say.
“Fuck you,” she says in return, refusing to be charmed and returning the gun to the drawer. She swivels out of bed, her bare feet padding across the mock-hardwood floor of the narrow hallway toward the bedrooms of her two children. “Erin,” she calls out, knocking on her daughter’s door before opening it, hearing the teenager moan beneath her mountain of covers. “Time to get up, sweetie.”
“Go away,” comes the muffled response.
Maggie backs into the hall, understanding there’s no point arguing. Erin will stay in bed until she can no longer tolerate the sound of her mother’s exhortations and only then will she deign to get up and dressed. She will spend the next twenty to thirty minutes in the bathroom, fixing her hair and makeup. She will refuse to have anything for breakfast. She will decline to engage in anything resembling a conversation with either her mother or younger brother. She will check her phone, toss her hair, and roll her eyes more times than Maggie can count. And after finally climbing into the black SUV beside her mother, she will remember that she has forgotten something of vital importance—occasionally the homework she hasn’t completed, usually the cellphone she left in the powder room while doing a final check of her appearance—thereby delaying them further. She may or may not remember to reset the house alarm, in which case Maggie will have to get out of the car to do it herself. Maggie will then chauffeur the kids to their respective schools, dropping Leo off first, then Erin, who will exit the car without a backward glance just as the bell is sounding.
“This could all be avoided, you know,”she hears Erin say.“All you have to do is—”
“You’re not getting your own car.”
“Why not? Dad could probably get me a good deal….”
“You’re not getting your own car.”
“What’s the point of having my license if you won’t let me drive? Besides, if I have my own car, you won’t have to drive us back and forth to school every day. You could get a job, get a life….”
“I have a life.”
“Youhada life. You threw it away.”
“Okay, that’s enough.”
“I think you enjoy playing martyr….”
“I said, enough!”
And enough of that,Maggie decides, banishing the unpleasant thoughts as she enters her son’s room. She touches him gently on the shoulder. “Leo, honey. Time to wake up.”
The shy eight-year-old flips onto his back and opens the deep blue eyes he inherited from his father. “What day is it?”
“It’s Wednesday. Why?”
“So we’re having dinner with Dad?”
“That’s right.”
“And he’ll pick us up after school?”
Maggie nods. “If he’s not there when you get out, you call me immediately.”