FIVE MONTHS EARLIER
It’s a beautiful spring day, and Bobby and Leo are playing soccer out in the backyard.
Yes, April and I are still friends. She still calls me her best friend. Even though I despise her.
I can’t seem to cut her out of my life though. She’s just so nice. And our kids still go to the same school, and somehow they ended up in the same class yet again even though I specifically requested Leo to be in a different class than Bobby. She still goes to the PTA meetings, despite my efforts to assign her all the most unpleasant tasks to do. But she always does it. With a smile.
I’ve been trying to dodge her every time she asked for a playdate, but she begged me this time. Bobby misses Leo so much. Why do you have Leo in so many activities? She doesn’t seem to get that I put him in the activities to keep him away from Bobby. April aside, I’m not a fan of Bobby Masterson. He’s a bad influence.
While the boys are kicking around the soccer ball, I’m doing the incredibly exciting task of putting away a load of laundry. We have a cleaning woman who comes once a week, but there’s too much laundry so I always do an extra load mid-week. There’s nothing wrong with doing laundry. I’ve probably done hundreds—nay, thousands—of loads in my life. But it bothers me that I invested so many years and so much pain in my education, and somehow laundry is the highlight of my day today. My brain feels like it’s rotting away.
Don’t laugh, but I used to have this fantasy about being the U.S. Attorney General someday. I wrote an essay about it when I was in grade school, and even though I kept it to myself after that, it was always in the back of my head. My dream job.
Of course, now it’s outright laughable. I’m so far off from my dream, it seems completely out of reach.
As I throw a load of Keith’s underwear into the top drawer of our dresser, my fingers touch something cold and metallic. I frown and sift through the underwear, looking for the object. I pull out a little flip phone. It’s one of those burner phones people use when they want to talk to somebody without it going to their main phone.
What is my husband doing with one of those phones?
Of course, I’m not stupid. The answer is pretty obvious. He’s cheating on me. It’s not like my husband is some kind of spy.
I flip it open and I see a string of text messages. Some are from Keith and some are from the other party. I take a second to scan through them.
Do you want to meet tonight? I can’t wait.
Is your wife around? Can you get away? I’m on my way to see you.
I want to be furious, but somehow, I’m not. I’m not even surprised. But then again, I can’t exactly let him get away with this. I calmly type into the text message screen:
This is Keith’s wife. You’re busted. Don’t contact him again if you know what’s good for you.
I get distracted from the phone by the sounds of shouting coming from outside. I shove the phone into my pocket, then I rush to the window, where I see Leo and Bobby in the backyard, screaming at each other. Then I watch as Bobby picks up the soccer ball and hurls it right at Leo. It smacks him right in the face, and my son lets out a howl and clutches his cheek.
I go running.
By the time I get to the backyard, Leo is sobbing. Bobby is standing nearby, shifting between his little legs. I ignore him and pry Leo’s hand off his cheek. I can see right away there’s going to be a bruise there.
“He threw the ball at my face on purpose!” Leo sobs.
“No, I didn’t!” Bobby says. “It was an accident. We were playing soccer and it accidentally hit him.”
I whip my head around to look at Bobby. His blue eyes are wide and earnest. If I didn’t see the whole thing myself, I would swear he was telling the truth. Like mother like son.
“It was an accident,” Bobby says again. “It wasn’t my fault!”
“I saw you,” I snap at him. “I was watching through the window upstairs.”
Bobby opens his mouth again like he’s going to protest my eyewitness account, but then he thinks better of it and hangs his head.
“Say you’re sorry,” I hiss at Bobby. “Sorry,” Bobby mumbles.
It’s the least sincere sorry I’ve ever heard, and I’m raising two little boys. I can’t even look at Bobby right now, so I send him into our house to watch TV while I stay out in the backyard with Leo, who is still crying.
“I hate Bobby!” Leo sobs. “I don’t want to play with him anymore.
He’s always mean to me and taking my stuff.”
I know about the latter. At first, I thought Leo was just misplacing his things. But then I found one of his toy trucks that we had been looking for days in a drawer at April’s house. Bobby clearly took it from him and hid it. As I said, that kid is not a good influence.
“You don’t have to play with him anymore,” I tell Leo. “I promise.”
Leo wipes his eyes and winces at the pain in his cheek. Keith’s burner phone buzzes in my pocket—an apology from his mistress? I don’t want to know. “If you tell him that,” Leo says, “he’s going to make everybody gang up on me at school.”
My heart is breaking for my son. I wish I had never moved into this neighborhood. I wish I had never met April Masterson.
Maybe she’s going to get away with killing Courtney Burns. But she’s not going to get away with terrorizing my son. I’m going to have a talk with her about Bobby. And she’s going to listen.
