Chapter 1

Sienna's POV

On the day of my prenatal checkup, I found out my husband, Caleb, was sleeping with his student.

That night, I spiked his Pinot Noir with poison. I watched him collapse, convulse, and take his agonizing last breath. Then, I dragged his body into the basement and sealed it inside an oak wine barrel.

For five years, I raised our daughter, Nora, on my own. I thought the secret would rot in the dark forever.

Until she told me: Daddy speaks to her from under the floorboards every night. His voice sounds muffled, like he’s talking through a thick blanket...

—

Caleb gripped my hand as we walked out of the maternity clinic in Sacramento, his eyes red with emotion. He stopped by the driveway and kissed my forehead. "I'm going to be the best dad in the world. I swear."

I smiled and squeezed his hand back. But my stomach was churning.

Two hours earlier in the waiting room, as I was hanging his coat up, his phone screen lit up. A text from an unsaved number.

"Is that boring old florist still dreaming of being a mom? Look at what you're missing, Daddy."

Below the text was a photo. Taken in the staff locker room at Linden Creek High, it showed her straddling a bench, wearing nothing but the white dress shirt of Caleb's I had ironed myself.

Back at the old house my father left me, Caleb slumped onto the couch to grade papers, just like always.

I grabbed two wine glasses from the kitchen and opened a bottle of Pinot Noir my dad had brewed in the basement.

"To a successful checkup," I said, sitting across from him and raising my glass. "I heard that when a wife gets pregnant, men tend to lose control and cheat. Is that true?"

He laughed and took a large gulp. "If I ever had an affair, I'd deserve to drop dead..."

The next second, the glass slipped from his fingers, shattering on the hardwood floor and splashing crimson wine everywhere.

"Sienna... what’s in this..." Clutching his stomach, he slid off the couch, curling into a ball amidst the broken glass and red stains. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. The light in his eyes was quickly swallowed by raw terror.

"Help... please..."

I sat on the couch and took a sip from my own glass.

"Zoe is waiting for you, Caleb," I said. My voice was so terrifyingly calm I barely recognized it. "But you're not going anywhere. After all—you deserve to drop dead, right?"

His lips had already turned purple. His fingers clawed weakly at his own throat. A few minutes later, the struggling stopped. He went rigid in the pool of wine, his eyes still wide open.

I set my glass down and headed for the basement.

The empty oak barrels my dad left behind were still neatly stacked in the corner. I dragged Caleb down the stone steps and shoved him into the largest barrel in the back. Then, I nailed the lid shut.

The next day, I sat in a chair at the Linden Creek Police Department, sobbing uncontrollably.

Detective Kowalski, sitting across from me, handed me a box of tissues.

"He took all the cash and his passport," I choked out, pushing the printed copies of Zoe’s explicit emails across the desk. "He ran off with his student... He abandoned us..."

Kowalski leafed through the printouts, sighed, and patted my shoulder. "We'll put out a bulletin, Mrs. Aldrich. Go home and take care of yourself."

And just like that, the case went cold. To everyone, Caleb Tierney was just another scumbag who abandoned his pregnant wife to elope with a teenager.

Five years passed.

No one mentioned Caleb anymore. I raised Nora on my own, and life became as quiet as stagnant water. She was a sweet, quiet girl with light brown hair—just like Caleb’s. I worked at the flower shop, picked her up on time, made dinner, read her stories, and tucked her in.

I had padlocked the basement door and tossed the key into the deepest corner of the highest kitchen cabinet.

I thought as long as I never went down there, the secret would slowly decay in the smell of oak and mildew until it was nothing.

Until this afternoon.

Nora was sitting in her car seat in the back, quietly playing with her drawing pad.

Red light. I casually glanced at her through the rearview mirror.

"Nora, what did you draw in art class today?"

She obediently handed the paper to the front.

I took it and looked down.

In the dead center of the page, drawn in black charcoal, was a massive, closed circle. Inside the circle was a stick figure, its limbs folded and twisted at an impossible angle.

It was the exact same posture I had forced Caleb into when I shoved him into the barrel five years ago.

Next to the circle, scrawled in red crayon, was one word:

DADDY

"What is this?" My voice cracked. "Nora, who taught you to draw this?"

In the rearview mirror, Nora looked up. She gazed at me with Caleb’s light brown eyes, utterly unfazed.

"Nobody taught me, Mommy."

"Daddy lives inside that barrel. He talks to me from under the floorboards every night."