My Wife Told Our Daughter to Say She’d Just Gone for Groceries — The Second Phone in the Drawer Told the Real Story

That was the entire arrangement.

That was why I was at the field.

“Lily,” I said, very carefully.

“When did Mom leave?”

There was a pause, and in that pause my stomach dropped into a cold hard knot, because I already knew that whatever she said next was going to be bad.

“Before lunch,” my daughter whispered.

Chapter 3 — The Drive

I do not remember much of the drive home.