First Word

Chapter 1 I placed her body in the trunk of a gold Toyota Camry. I gazed down at her with my hand still holding the trunk lid. Her dark eyes were glassy now and stared up at me, lifeless, and somehow accusing. Her form was bent out of shape and her thick, dark hair was mussed with just a hint of dark blood smeared in it from a single wound. “Dead,” I thought and closed the trunk. *** One year earlier … It was a sunny fall afternoon. The sun shone through the sliding-glass door and woke me up. My blue eyes fluttered opened, and I looked out the slider toward the pool area where our white standard poodle Maisy slept curled up in her fleece bed. Brown, crisp fall leaves had blown up on the porch and piled around her dog bed. I was alone as my husband Paul had taken the kids to school already. We switched mornings, and this morning I got to sleep in, which I enjoyed. He was always a prick about it, though. Said it wasn’t his job and had once told...