The plan, if it deserved that word, had been stupid and desperate.
She had used the spare fob to open the garage and leave Daniel’s car running long enough to fill the attached garage with fumes.
Then she opened the interior door just enough, she claimed, to make him dizzy, not dead.
The cinnamon plug-in was supposed to hide the smell.
The note taped inside the garage door was not a confession.
It was instructions from the man she had been seeing.
Short lines.
Cold lines.
Use the fob.
Keep the door closed.
Get the laptop.
Leave before the bus.
That last line was the one that made her fold over her knees and sob until she gagged.
Leave before the bus.
Chloe’s bus had come early that day.
Three minutes early, according to the school’s transportation log.
Three minutes is nothing in an ordinary afternoon.
Three minutes can also be the difference between a theft and a funeral.
At 4:26 p.m., an officer drove me to the hospital because my hands were shaking too badly to hold my keys.
I sat in the back of the cruiser with my phone in my lap and stared at my own reflection in the dark glass.
I looked like a woman I would have felt sorry for in a grocery store.
At the hospital intake desk, they made me spell Chloe’s full name twice.
They gave me a visitor badge with the time printed on it.
4:41 p.m.
I still have it in a drawer.
Daniel was treated first.
Chloe was smaller, but she had gotten less exposure because she had called me and then collapsed closer to the den doorway.
The doctor said the word lucky.
I hated him for it for about ten seconds.
Then I understood he was trying to give me something to hold.
Daniel woke around 6:10 p.m.
