Chapter 2

2

I have the most beautiful home.

It's an old house with the first two floors fully renovated, although the attic is yet untouched. Grant owned it for many years before I moved in, and I always wondered why he never bothered to update the topmost floor of the house, but I didn't probe too deeply. The house is made of brown bricks with a white trim and a large chimney rising majestically from the roof. The home boasts five bedrooms that we fantasized about filling with children after reading in a magazine that this Long Island neighborhood had some of the best schools in the state.

These days, it just seems empty.

When I pull into the driveway and park just outside our two-car garage, I find a woman standing on my front porch, wearing yoga pants and a hoodie, her brown hair in a messy bun, clutching a large rectangular dish. It's Poppy, my next-door neighbor and closest friend, and she has what I presume is a casserole.

I don't want another casserole. However, ever since Grant died, it seems that people have decided that casseroles are all I want. I have received more of them than flowers, despite the fact that casseroles are more of a family thing, and there's just one of me. My refrigerator is only one rectangular pan away from being a solid mass of noodles and cream of mushroom soup.

I kill the engine and climb out of my Lexus, clutching the brown paper bag containing my tea tree oil shampoo. Poppy brightens when she sees me, balancing the dish on one hand so she can wave to me. For a moment, I hope that the dish will fall, spilling egg noodles and broccoli everywhere.

"Alice!" she calls out. "I brought you dinner!"

I try to smile, although I suspect the smile doesn't touch my eyes or even my nose. "That's very thoughtful."

"Just pop this in the oven for thirty minutes at 350," she chirps, even though I am well aware of how to heat up a casserole, thank you very much.

I unlock the door to the house. For a split second, I get that sensation, again, that there is somebody watching me. Poppy is smiling eagerly as she waits for me to unlock the door, but when she notices my expression, her smile falters.

"Are you okay, Alice?" she asks.

People keep asking me that. How could I be okay? My husband is dead. He was one month shy of thirty-eight years old, and he died in a fiery car wreck. How exactly am I supposed to be okay?

Yet I can't say all that. What they are really asking is if I am going to suddenly dissolve into a blubbering mess, ripping my hair out with my fists, and then run up to the roof and throw myself off. That is the actual question.

"I'm okay," I say.

I finally manage to get the door open, and Poppy tags along after me with her casserole. "Are you hungry?" she asks. "I can heat it up for you now."

It wouldn't do to tell her that I hate casseroles with every fiber of my being. Not after she's made me five of them.

"No, thanks." I wrench open the coat closet by the front door—one of the few closets in the house that does not allow you to walk inside. I look up at the LED lights mounted on the ceiling of the closet, and I swear softly under my breath. Useless . "I'm not really hungry."

"I'll make you some tea, then," Poppy says.

Before I can protest that I don't actually like tea either (I find it just barely tolerable if you put a little milk in it), Poppy is inside my kitchen. She fills a pot with warm water and sets it on the stove to boil. She searches in a cupboard over the sink until she locates a box of herbal tea. It must have belonged to Grant.

While Poppy is brewing the tea, I wander into the living room. There's very little in this room that doesn't remind me of Grant. The television set is almost comically large, because he said that we have the money and should treat ourselves. There's the antique coffee table that he saw me admiring in the store and insisted on buying in spite of the outrageous price tag. Even the Italian leather sofa still has a dent in it from where he always used to sit.

The most memories, however, are reflected in the frames sitting on the mantel over the fireplace. I step across our Oriental rug to get a closer look at the photographs that catalog our relationship from beginning to end. There is one of the two of us at a fancy seafood restaurant, celebrating the anniversary of our first date. Our wedding photo: me wearing a white lacy gown, with my vivid crimson hair pulled up into a French twist, little tendrils falling around the side of my face, and Grant looking devastatingly handsome in a tuxedo. Another photo of our honeymoon in Cancun, looking happy and tan on the beach.

"You must be missing him a lot."

Poppy's voice comes from behind me, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I turn around to find her holding out a steaming mug of tea. I take it so as not to be rude, and now I have to stand here, holding this gross tea, pretending to drink it.

You would think that if Poppy is my closest friend, she would know I don't enjoy drinking tea. There is, in fact, quite a lot she doesn't know about me.

"Drink up while it's hot," she tells me.

Obligingly, I take a sip of the tea. Not surprisingly, it's terrible. Because it's tea.

Poppy sits beside me and idly picks up the paperback book I've got lying on the coffee table. She reads the description and flips through the pages. " The Boyfriend … Is this any good?"

"Oh, yes—I love it. But I'm on page two, and I'm pretty sure I already know what the twist is going to be." I take another tentative sip of tea. "Have you ever heard of the author, Freida McFadden?"

"Nope."

"She writes psychological thrillers. The kind with short chapters and lots of twists that are shocking but also kind of completely out of nowhere."

"Still nope." She hesitates. "Oh, wait. Did she write Fifty Shades of Grey ?"

"Uh, no."

" Harry Potter ?"

"No."

"Then no, never heard of her. What else did she write?"

" The Housemaid ."

"Housemaid? Is she British?" Poppy asks.

"Oh, I'm not sure. Yes, probably."

Poppy tosses the paperback back on the table. I pretend to take another sip of tea while she gets up to study the photos on my mantel. She scrutinizes them one by one, a frown spreading across her lips. "You guys were so happy together. This must be so hard for you."

You have no idea, Poppy, I want to tell her. It's so hard that I'm seeing Grant while I'm buying shampoo.

"Yes," I say instead.

"Sometimes I think we all just get a certain amount of happiness," she muses. "And you and Grant had so much of it during your time together. Maybe you simply… used it all up."

Great theory, Poppy . I force a smile. "I was certainly blessed."

"And it might not have seemed like it at the time," she says, "but it ended up being a good thing that you never got pregnant, even though I know you and Grant had been hoping for it."

I close my eyes for a moment, thinking of all those extra bedrooms upstairs. Grant had a twinkle in his eyes when we talked about turning one of them into a nursery, but then every month, I would get my period, and there would be that unspoken disappointment.

I press the palm of my hand against my abdomen.

"I just want you to know," Poppy says, "that you're my best friend, and whatever you need, I am here for you."

But I'm not listening to Poppy. I'm looking over her shoulder, at the window that overlooks the side of our house and the narrow and deserted path that runs between my house and Poppy's. The two houses are divided by a picket fence that surrounds my entire property.

For a split second, I could swear there is a face staring at me through that window.