Standing on the threshold, framed by the warm yellow light of the interior hallway, was Clara.
My wife.
She was thirty-two years old, with dark chestnut hair pulled back into a simple ponytail, wearing her favorite faded denim jeans and an oversized cream knit cardigan. Her hands were folded loosely in front of her waist.
She did not look like a woman who was being held hostage by a military death squad.
She stood with her chin lifted, her shoulders square, her hazel eyes completely, terrifyingly steady.
Behind her, in the formal dining room, the sound of the upright piano continued:
Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do.
Chloe’s small fingers were hitting the keys with that light, rhythmic, seven-year-old precision that I had listened to every Saturday morning since she was five.
And sitting beside the piano, his heavy golden head resting flat across Chloe’s patent-leather school shoes, was Barnaby—our eighty-pound golden retriever.
