“Please don’t make me go to school tomorrow,” Rose begged plaintively.

“Why? Are you sick?” I asked, sitting on the toilet and rubbing her hard little back.

“No. . .Gabrielle. . .she told everyone lies about us!” Rose squeaked out, tears streaming down her face.

“What did she say?” I asked, feeling a strange predatory cold come over me.

“She-she-she told people that Diane and I are freaks! That we take b-b-baths together and kiss each other!” Rose whispered through her tears, looking ashamed. “And now no one wants to be friends with us.”

“Oh, Rose,” I sighed, shaking my head and pulling her into me. “You two can stay home tomorrow. And don’t worry, we can figure something out,” I murmured into her hair.

I could feel Rose trembling against me. “Please don’t tell Robert,” she whispered. “He’ll just get mad and take her side.”

“I won’t.”

Two days later Rose and Diane were still staying home from school. I had ordered brochures for new private schools for the girls but I resented Gabrielle for running my girls out of their school, when they’d already had to start over so many times.

That night, a Thursday, Robert came home earlier than usual and noticed that Gabrielle hadn’t returned for her curfew, yet again.

“Did you call around to her friends?” Robert asked.

“The ones I know,” I replied. “She’s very secretive.”

“She could be lying in a ditch somewhere,” Robert retorted. I had been sitting in the living room with the twins watching TV when he confronted me, and they shuffled off to bed, casting worried looks back at me.

“She does this all the time!” I protested. “And if I tell her she’s grounded, she just ignores me! I’ve told you time and time again! What do you expect me to do?”

Robert stood there, cold and seething. He was unrecognizable from the man he’d been when we’d first married, back when his commute was a fifteen-minute cab ride and his biggest concern was where we could get dinner reservations. Now he was permanently exhausted from the long days, brittle from our fights, and obsessed with his new daughter. He didn’t care about me anymore.

“I work hard all day and the only thing you’re expected to do is take care of the kids,” Robert said, throwing my purse at me. “Now, go out there and look for her. And don’t come back until you find her!”

RUTH:Did you find her?

DAPHNE:No. I did look but I figured she was probably at a party, smoking grass and drinking beer. Robert was furious when I got home, and he went out to look too but he was back within twenty minutes. I knew he wasn’t really prepared to drive around all night; he just wanted to prove that he cared more than me. A couple hours later, there was a cop on our front step. He had tears in his eyes and his hat in his hands. Gabrielle had been killed in a hit-and-run on a country road out the other side of town. The driver hadn’t stopped, and it had taken over an hour for anyone to find her. As soon as he heard, Robert fell to the floor and lay there, howling. I hugged him for ages, tried to give what comfort I could.

RUTH:How did you feel about her dying?

DAPHNE:Obviously, a child dying is horrible but she made life so hard for me and the kids. And she was always flouting my rules. If she’d actually respected her curfew, she wouldn’t have been biking so late at night.

RUTH:But I’m sure Robert was devastated.

DAPHNE:Oh yes. He was a wreck, a bloodless, sleepless wreck. He’d only been a father for eighteen months, but he was very upset about it ending. You see, I didn’t kill Gabrielle but her death did make things awfully convenient. Even more so when, a few weeks later, Robert killed himself out of grief. And the thoughtful way he did it, jumping off his office building, left no question that it was suicide. He was my freebie.

ShockAndBlah:

Is anyone buying this?

BurntheBookBurnerz:

No. It just. . . sounds like a lie. Like a lie she didn’t have time to really practice.

ShockAndBlah:

Do you think that Gabrielle was as terrible as Daphne says?

PreyAllDay:

No.