My Husband Cooked Dinner, and Minutes After My Son and I Ate, We Both Collapsed. I Played Dead on the Floor and Heard Him on the Phone: “Soon They’ll Both Be Gone”

I felt his fingers close around my wrist and press, searching for the pulse I was suddenly, desperately grateful he could not know I was aware of.

He held it a moment, and then he set my hand back down on the tile, almost gently.

“You really should have minded your own business, Brenda,” he murmured.

Just that.

Then he stood.

I heard him cross to Lucas, and it took everything I had — every scrap of will I have ever owned — not to move, not to throw myself between them, when I felt him crouch beside my son.

“This’ll be easier for everybody, kiddo,” Christopher said softly, almost kindly, and I lay there with my eyes shut and let him say it, because a dead woman cannot save anyone, and the only version of me that could get Lucas out of that house was the version lying perfectly still on the floor.