Chapter One

The Argument

The clock on the microwave read 1:47 a.m. when I finally heard the key in the lock.

I had been sitting on the couch in the dark for almost three hours, phone face-down on the cushion beside me, the only light coming from the streetlamp outside the living-room window. Every time a car slowed on the street my stomach tightened, then dropped again when it kept moving. I had told myself I would go to bed at midnight. Then at twelve-thirty. Then at one. Instead I stayed exactly where I was, knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them, listening to the quiet of an apartment that...