I needed him to believe he had won, right up until the moment he had lost.

My hands were trembling so hard that I caught sight of a grocery receipt on the floor and shoved it under the cabinet, just to give them one ordinary thing to do.

Then I straightened up and went looking for a way to call for help.

Chapter 7 — The Corded Phone

Our cell phones were gone, but Christopher had forgotten something, and it was the one thing in that house he had spent months telling me to get rid of.

In the narrow cabinet beside the pantry, behind a dusty stack of old takeout menus, sat an ancient cream-colored corded telephone — the landline, the one he complained about constantly, the useless relic he said we should have disconnected years ago.