I nodded slowly, because there had never been any doubt of that.

Gregory.

The man Laura had left us for, all those years ago.

Her former boss, the man with the expensive car and the luxury vacations and the wealthy life she had decided, at some point, that she deserved more than she deserved her own children.

Chapter 5 — Fifteen Years Earlier

To understand what my daughters and I were bracing for, you have to understand the day it began, the day I have never been able to fully put down, though I have tried.

It lives in me the way certain days do, not as a memory I choose to visit but as a room I sometimes find myself in without meaning to walk there.