I built the calm, one disciplined choice at a time, over a decade, and then, on the worst day of my life, it was there when I reached for it.

Chapter 2 — The Viewing

I booked the viewing under the name Jessica.

It was the first name that came into my head, and it did the job, which was to be nobody, to be a prospective tenant with no history and no connection to the family whose house was, impossibly, for rent.

I put on a pair of oversized sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low, the disguise of a person who does not want to be recognized, and I stood on the porch of the house I had bought and had not seen in six years, and I rang the bell of my own mother’s home like a visitor.

The door opened, and my younger sister, Valerie, stood in the doorway.