Until that night, I would have told anyone I lived a quiet, ordinary life.
We lived in a neat two-story colonial in a peaceful suburb just outside Boston, on a street lined with sugar maples and basketball hoops and recycling bins that always seemed to roll into the road on windy mornings. I taught part-time at a local community college. My daughter, Ava, was fifteen and in tenth grade. She loved photography, old movies, and the kind of sad indie music that made every room she walked through feel a little heavier and a little more beautiful. My husband, Daniel, was reliable, calm, organized, the kind of man neighbors praised without being asked. He remembered birthdays, shoveled elderly driveways after snowstorms, and wore pressed button-down shirts even on Saturdays.
From the outside, we were the kind of family people assumed was doing just fine.
That morning began like any other.
I woke up at 6:12 to the soft buzz of my phone alarm and the smell of rain drifting through the cracked bedroom window. Daniel was already in the shower. I could hear the water running while I stood in the kitchen grinding coffee beans and staring at the dark backyard. March in Massachusetts always felt like a season that couldn’t decide who it wanted to be. The grass was still brittle from winter, but the air had begun to soften.
Ava came downstairs ten minutes later wearing a gray hoodie, leggings, and the tired expression of a teenager who would rather fight a bear than speak before 7:00 a.m.
“Morning,” I said.
