Chapter 1 - Coming Home Early
Seven hours earlier, Rachel Bennett had been sitting inside an airport terminal in Chicago, watching rain slide down the windows.
Her work conference was supposed to continue until Thursday afternoon, but the final meetings had been canceled because of severe weather moving across the region. When the airline offered her a seat on the last flight to Philadelphia, she accepted without hesitation.
She had been away for seven days, the longest business trip she had taken since Emily was born.
Michael had assured her everything would be fine.
“Emily and I will survive without you,” he had joked while helping place her suitcase in the car.
Emily had stood on the front steps wearing her green T-shirt and gray sleep pants, though it was still early evening.
“Bring me one of those tiny airport snow globes,” she had said.
Rachel promised she would.
During the first two days of the trip, Emily sent photographs of homework pages, their orange cat sitting inside a laundry basket, and a badly shaped pancake Michael had attempted to make.
Then the messages became shorter.
On Monday evening, Emily wrote that she was tired.
On Tuesday, she did not reply at all.
Rachel called Michael.
“She lost her phone privileges,” he explained.
“For what?”
“Attitude.”
“What kind of attitude?”
“She keeps questioning everything I tell her.”
Rachel had heard irritation in his voice, but she had been standing outside a conference room with three clients waiting for her.
She told herself they would discuss it when she returned.
Now, sitting on the flight home, Rachel replayed that conversation repeatedly.
Michael had changed during the past year. His consulting business had lost several major clients, though he insisted the problems were temporary. He spent more time behind the closed door of his home office. He became defensive whenever Rachel mentioned money.
Three months earlier, she discovered that he had withdrawn twenty thousand dollars from their emergency account.
He claimed it had gone toward business expenses.
When she asked to see the invoices, he accused her of treating him like an employee.
Rachel had wanted to believe him.
Eleven years of marriage made disbelief feel like betrayal.
Yet as the plane descended through the dark clouds, she felt an uneasiness she could not explain.
May you like
Her return was meant to be a surprise.
By midnight, it would become something else entirely.
