Chapter 1 - Not Again
The scream came from the living room.
Not Noah's hungry cry. Not his tired cry.
A scream.
I dropped my phone on the kitchen counter and ran.
My three-month-old son lay in his bassinet with milk dripping from his hair, his eyelashes, his tiny red cheeks. Linda stood over him holding the bottle upside down like she had just emptied a glass into a sink.
"What did you do?"
She barely looked at me.
"He wouldn't drink it. Maybe now he'll stop wasting food."
For one second I couldn't move.
Then I grabbed Noah, pulled him against my chest, and wiped milk away from his nose and mouth with my sleeve.
"He's a baby!"
Linda rolled her eyes. "And you're teaching him that screaming gets him whatever he wants."
"Get away from him."
She reached for Noah.
I knocked her hand aside.
She grabbed my wrist hard enough to leave half-moon marks from her nails.
"You ungrateful little-"
I slapped her.
The sound cracked through the room.
The front door opened.
Ryan stood there in his work clothes, keys still in his hand.
His mother instantly started crying.
"She attacked me!"
Ryan stared at the red mark on Linda's cheek, then at me, then at Noah soaked against my shirt.
"Sarah," he said. "What the hell did you do?"
"Look at your son."
Noah screamed again.
Ryan's eyes dropped to the wet blanket in the bassinet.
The anger vanished from his face.
He looked at Linda.
"Mom... you promised me you'd never do this again."
I stopped breathing.
"Again?"
Linda's face changed.
Ryan closed his eyes like he wanted to pull the words back into his mouth.
Then I noticed the narrow walnut drawer built into the console table behind him.
The drawer Ryan had locked the day we brought Noah home.
The drawer he had told me never to open.
May you like
Linda saw me looking at it.
And for the first time since I had known her, she looked afraid.
