My heart shattered into pieces. We were friends. I wanted to go to her, to hug her, to offer comfort, but I couldn't leave my child, either. I could only watch, appalled and horrified.
Only minutes before, it was I who had panicked, certain Mia was in mortal danger, that I had lost her, that something terrible had occurred.
That dreadful intuition hadn't been wrong. Only it had been my friend's daughter, not mine. Guilt silted the relief that flooded my veins. How could I rejoice while Vivienne suffered unimaginable pain?
Whitney looked away, biting her lip, as if Vivienne's suffering might be contagious. Brooke swayed on her feet, her face pale, like she might faint.
Two female officers went to Vivienne and spoke to her in soft tones. "Your husband is outside," one of them said in a kind voice. "He's asking for you."
I turned and glanced through the front windows behind me. Leah's father stood on the drive next to several police cars, speaking to another officer. His shoulders stooped, his stricken face a garish mask in the flashing lights.
In the kitchen, the police officers helped Vivienne stand, supporting her on either side, and escorted her from the house. Vivienne howled her sorrow, her suffering, her outrage, her pain so close to the surface of her skin it was nearly incandescent.
She shuffled like an old woman, her back bent, shoulders slumped like the weight of her grief had broken something elemental that could never be repaired. I understood her new reality better than anyone here, how nothing would ever be the same again.
The front door closed, followed by a stunned silence. The girls looked at the floor while the mothers looked at each other in disbelief, in horror, in pity.
Rowan and Detective King returned to the living room. Rowan swept across the room and gathered Chloe into her arms again. She sank against her mother as if her legs had forgotten how to hold her up.
A moment later, Callahan came up the basement stairs and through the arched hallway. A police officer in his twentieswas beside her, holding several gowns on hangers. Their fabric shimmered under the chandelier's lights.
Callahan took a dress from the officer and held it up.
It was Mia's.
The beaded rose-gold mermaid gown I had helped her pick out just two weeks ago, the one she had tried on in the mirror at the resale shop with a hesitant smile, tracing the delicate beadwork with her fingertips.
She had thought she looked fat. I'd told her she was stunning. It wasn't an expensive designer gown, but it was nevertheless beautiful.
Now, it was no longer pristine. The hem was torn. Dirt smudged the entire front of the dress, and the fabric was snagged in several spots as if it had caught on something sharp.
Along the delicate beading on the bodice, dark against the soft blush fabric, was a stain. Small, scattered droplets dried to a dark brown.
It looked like blood.
My breath caught in my chest.
Detective King stepped forward. "Whose dress is this?"
"Mine," Mia said.
His gaze settled on Mia. On the scratches on her arms. Something dark beneath her fingernails, crusted in the creases of her skin. Dirt. From what? From where?
My pulse stuttered. Instinctively, I moved closer to Mia's side. To protect her, shield her, save her. To whisk her away from the horror and grief.
A sudden, vivid flashback hit me—the police arriving at the scene of my husband’s death. The flashing lights. Voices blurred together. A police officer speaking in low, steady tones. Frantic sobbing. The sirens wailing.
Mia kneeling, her hands clenched into fists, her breathing too shallow. Marcus, limp on the kitchen floor, blood pooling across the linoleum.
I'd been screaming. Or perhaps I had only felt the scream,trapped inside me, lodged deep in my ribs. Now, standing beside Mia, the same scream clawed up my throat.
"What’s your name?" the detective asked.
"Mia," my daughter said in a small voice. "Mia Kincaid."
Detective King narrowed his eyes. "Mia, where did you get those scratches?"
Mia stiffened. "Um, we were all out on the bluff. I was kneeling on the ground, getting a low shot with my camera, and I slipped. I fell a few feet down the bluff, into the bushes. The branches scratched my arms."
