Chapter 1 — Three Words

Mom, pretend you feel sick.

Don’t drink the tea.

We have to get out of here.

I read the note twice under the table, and the ordinary clatter of silverware and conversation seemed to drop away into a low, distant hum.

My eleven-year-old son, Kai, kept his eyes fixed on his plate as if nothing at all had passed between us.

Across from us my husband, Dario, scrolled through his phone.

Beside him, my mother-in-law, Blanca, smiled as she carved a pot roast in the country house she kept out past the edge of Austin, a low ranch-style place tucked into the hills where the nearest neighbor was a mile of dark road away.

It had every appearance of an easy family Sunday.

Right up until I stood, said I needed the restroom, and Kai slid out of his chair to follow me down the hall.

I should say something about that house, because I have thought since about why they chose it.

It was Blanca’s country place, an hour out of the city, the last house on a road that turned to gravel and then to dirt.

There was no neighbor close enough to hear anything.

There was no reason for anyone to drive past.

When I first saw it, years before, I had found it peaceful — the quiet, the hills, the rose garden Blanca tended with such care.

I understand now that everything I read as peace, they had chosen as isolation.

A sudden death is easier to stage where there are no witnesses and the nearest ambulance is thirty minutes out on a dark road.

They had not invited us to the country for a family dinner.