Chapter 1

I took the cleaning job to pay for my daughter's SAT prep.

The man in the family portrait was my husband.

I stood in the living room with my supply caddy in one hand, staring at Eric's face above the fireplace. His arm was around a woman in white. A little boy sat between them, smiling with all his teeth.

My phone buzzed.

Vanessa, the client: Are you there? Please do a thorough job. Take all the trash out when you leave.

My fingers felt numb as I typed.

Is that your husband and son in the picture?

Yes! We're in Hawaii for the long weekend. Usually my in-laws help with the house, but they came with us.

Then another message.

Don't you have a husband? Cleaning houses on a holiday sounds rough.

I watched Eric smile down from the wall.

I used to.

She sent a sympathetic emoji.

My husband says he'll add a nice tip if you do a good job.

I set the phone on the leather couch.

Sixteen hundred square feet overlooking the river. The kind of Chicago condo I had walked past on my way to other people's homes, wondering what it felt like to live above the weather.

In the boy's room, there was a huge Lego castle, shelves of model cars, and clothes with price tags still attached. An adjustable desk faced the window.

Julia did her homework at a secondhand table with a paperback wedged under one leg. At seventeen, she'd learned to hold it steady with her knee.

“Kids don't need expensive things,” Eric always said.

He meant our kid.

In the primary bedroom, I found silk bedding, a framed photograph, and enough skin care to cover half our rent. My mother's gold bracelet lay in a jewelry box on the dresser.

I'd given it to Eric to have the clasp repaired during our move three years earlier. Then it disappeared.

“You probably threw the box out,” he'd said. “What do you want me to do about it?”

I'd blamed myself for three years.

Inside the bracelet, my mother's initials curved beside mine. I put it on.

In the mirror, my faded T-shirt looked almost gray. I couldn't remember the last time I'd bought a shirt without calculating which bill could wait.

Eric sent me three hundred dollars a month. Business was bad. His pay had been cut. I needed to be understanding.

I stocked produce before dawn, cleaned houses after that, and washed dishes at a restaurant when they could give me a shift.

For this.

I pulled open a drawer full of jewelry and turned it onto the floor. Emptied face cream onto the sheets. Dragged lipstick across the glass covering their portrait.

By the time I stopped, the room looked like the inside of my head.

I knew there would be consequences. In that moment, I couldn't make myself care.

I took my caddy, my mother's bracelet, and my phone, and left.