Chapter 1 - THE SCREAM BEHIND THE HEDGE
I came home early with two dozen red roses for the woman I was supposed to marry in six weeks.
Then I heard my mother scream from the backyard.
I ran through the sunroom, but Bianca’s voice stopped me behind the hedge.
“Stop fighting me, Martha.”
My seventy-eight-year-old mother was in the deep end fully dressed, both hands clawing at the stone edge. Her blouse was soaked dark, one shoe was missing, and her arms shook every time she tried to pull herself up.
Bianca stood three feet away.
“Please,” Mom gasped. “Help me.”
Bianca crouched close enough to touch her. She didn’t.
“You should’ve gone to Brookside when Julian suggested it,” she said.
My stomach turned. I had never suggested that.
Mom slipped underwater, then caught the edge again.
“Julian will know.”
Bianca smiled. “No, he won’t. I’ve spent months making sure he doesn’t trust a word you say.”
The roses fell from my hand.
Bianca spun around. For one second, she looked irritated rather than frightened.
“Julian?”
I ran past her, dropped beside the pool, and grabbed Mom’s wrists. “Push with your feet.”
I hauled her onto the deck. She collapsed against me coughing, her skin ice cold.
Behind us, Bianca suddenly started crying.
“Thank God you’re home. She fell in. She got confused and wouldn’t let me help.”
Yesterday, I might have believed her.
I called 911. By the time police arrived, Bianca had already changed her story twice.
Before an officer escorted her away, she whispered, “You’re making a terrible mistake.”
I pulled off my engagement ring and placed it in her palm.
“No. I almost made one.”
At the hospital that night, Mom held my hand tightly.
“This wasn’t the first time,” she whispered.
“What wasn’t?”
May you like
Her eyes filled with tears.
“The first time Bianca tried to make me think I was losing my mind.”
