Then he caught himself, and forced a stiff smile onto his face.

“Just — go back to the boys.”

I brushed it off.

I told myself he was stressed about one of his corporate acquisitions, that men like Kenneth carried their work home in their shoulders.

I had spent fifteen years learning to give my husband the benefit of the doubt, and I gave it to him one final time, standing in that beautiful backyard, not knowing that the thing he was watching the driveway for was the last hour of my children’s lives, and mine, arriving on schedule.

Chapter 3 — Absolute Intimacy