I used to think my life in the small Massachusetts town of Brackenridge was quiet in the best possible way. My husband, Silas Rowan, had always appeared gentle, steady, endlessly patient. He was the kind of man who straightened crooked picture frames without being asked and remembered every appointment I forgot. If someone had told me a year ago that I would one day run barefoot through the night to escape him, I would have laughed. The kind of laugh that comes from believing you understand the person who sleeps beside you.
That belief crumbled piece by piece. It did not fall all at once.
It began with the pills he said were mine. They came in amber bottles with printed pharmacy labels I never questioned. Silas told me they were meant to help with my restless sleep. I had been waking up weary for weeks, unable to shake the fog that clung to me every morning. So when he pressed the bottle into my hand and said he had spoken to a doctor about it, I simply nodded. Trusting him had always been easy.