And according to the message on the screen, David had spent the hours I was in the air telling people I had disappeared with our daughter.
Three days earlier, he had been the one who changed the locks on our house.
I had boarded that flight carrying two suitcases, a folded stroller, a diaper bag that no longer contained diapers, and my five-year-old daughter, Fiona, asleep against my chest.
That was almost everything I still had with me.
I was thirty-one years old, and until that week, I had never seriously imagined leaving Chicago.
My life was there.
Our townhouse was there.
Fiona’s preschool was there.]
The pediatrician who had known her since she was six weeks old was there.
The grocery store where the cashier always gave her a sticker was three blocks from our house.
Even after my marriage began coming apart, some foolish part of me had believed the rest of my life would remain recognizable.
