Anyone that stumbles on the quaint coastal town of Shelter Bay might call it sleepy. They may even mistake it for a place where nothing much happens.
Perhaps that's because it's a tight-knit community full of happy families and local businesses go...
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I didn't hear the crash as the tray slipped out of my hands. I didn't see the pint glasses shatter against the floor, and I didn't even feel the sticky backsplash cover my front.
My mind tingled with the static blasting in my ears. Every alarm that my body could sound was going off all at once, paralyzing me from the waist down.
All I could do was stare at the flatscreen over the bar as I broke out in a bone-chilling sweat.
I'd been minding my own business and working my lunchtime shift when I looked up to see Rayna DiMarco narrating into the camera next to a photograph.
My brain must have broken when I recognized not just the woman in the picture, but the photo itself.
It was Cassie Lewis, the chief technical officer at Allen's biotech startup.
The closed captioning plodded across the bottom of the screen, eventually spelling out in black and white that she was the murder victim in the Mercedes on Middlebrook.
She was my friend, too. Or at least, I thought she was my friend. It really put a damper on our bond when I caught her sleeping with my husband.
The picture next to Rayna on the screen was taken last year at the company's Holiday party, which felt like a lifetime ago. Ironically enough, that happened to be the photo that tipped me off to their affair.
Allen never touched his employees, whatsoever (because of his extreme germ phobia), yet his arm was casually draped around Cassie's shoulder. It was so wildly out of character for my husband that even other employees commented on it.
Naively, I thought Cassie and Allen's relationship was my key to freedom. I convinced myself that the abuse was finally over because Allen told me that he was through with me.
What a silly little girl I was.
He told me (while trying to kill me) that he'd done the math. He said that divorce was too good for me (which meant that a divorce would cost him too much). In his mind, it was far easier to kill me and claim the life insurance money after my 'tragic accidental drowning' at our idealistic lake house.
Allen never figured that I would fight back. That miscalculation ultimately cost him dearly.
My mouth opened and closed several times, but nothing went in or out. Breathing was suddenly a struggle.
"Hey, Ava," Monica's voice was low and a little shaky as it echoed in my ear. "Are you alright?"
Zach, one of the other barbacks, started sweeping up the glass and mopping up my mess to prevent any further accidents.
More voices layered over the confusion, but my ears were too blocked to understand what they were shouting. I just stood there, counting the seconds of dead wind until I felt very light, and the floor came zooming toward my face.
