Jodie loaded the gun the way she’d seen Ethan do it: finger-checking the rounds so they were lined up flush, then smacking the magazine up into the grip.
Her jittery hands almost fumbled the manoeuvre. She clenched them steady, then racked the slider back to chamber the first round.
Clack-snap.
Nine bullets loaded, but she’d only need two.
One for Ethan.
The other one for herself.
She flashed on her husband’s face; on his fixed stare, and the twisted mind-games shape-shifting behind it. Sweat prickled down her spine. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it would take more than one bullet to kill Ethan.
Fireworks hissed and crackled outside the car, and the sky exploded into a weeping willow of light. Jodie peered through the windscreen, scanning the strobe-lit crowds that lined the lake perimeter. Ethan was out there somewhere, masquerading tonight as Mister Nice Guy, a back-slapper and hand-shaker for the Fourth of July celebrations.
She slid the gun into her bag, then reached out to the drawing pad that lay on the seat beside her, lifting it onto her lap to leaf through it one last time.
The paintings were childlike but imaginative, showing uncomplicated feelings rather than copies of objects: the tangle of scribbly black for the cranky family cat; the sunshine-yellow splodge for the spring picnic; bursts of colour splattered from a height, paint squeezed straight from the tubes to the page.
‘Look what I can do, Mommy!’
Jodie brushed her fingertips across the rounded letters marking the bottom of every page: Abby McCall Age 3.
Her throat constricted. She swallowed against it, but the ache intensified, crushing her chest, choking her, smothering her, sending her spinning.
Breathe!
She bowed her head, took deep, shuddery breaths. Found a dead, flat place somewhere inside her and invited the numbness back in.
Slowly, Jodie straightened
