fear preserves strange things.
I had been awake since before sunrise, baking pies no one might eat and pretending a quiet holiday was the same as a peaceful one.
My daughter, Chloe, was expected around noon. She had promised to bring sweet potatoes because she claimed I always made them too soft. That was Chloe—twenty-eight, an engineer, and still the kind of daughter who could mock my cooking while carrying three grocery bags in one hand and a toolbox in the other.
Her calmness made people underestimate how deeply she
