Chapter 1 – The Blue Box
Ruth Carter shoved her pregnant daughter-in-law away from the front door.
Maya’s back struck the banister. She went down onto one knee, catching the rail before she hit the floor. The blue box at her feet tipped over, spilling plastic dinosaurs across the hallway.
“You’re holding up the whole family,” Ruth said.
Eli dropped his little backpack and ran to his mother.
“Mom! Did you know where I’m going?”
Maya held the banister with one hand and put the other around her six-year-old son. Her first thought was the baby. Her second was the question.
“We’re all going together, sweetheart.”
Eli looked at his grandmother.
“But Grandma said everybody agreed.”
The mover standing on the porch set down his hand truck.
“Ma’am, don’t try to get up yet. Do you want me to call someone?”
“My husband,” Maya said. “And I need to call my nurse.”
Ruth stepped toward them.
“She tripped over the box.”
The mover’s expression changed.
“I was standing right here.”
For a moment nobody spoke. Eli began collecting the dinosaurs with the frantic care of a child who believed a mess could make the adults angrier.
“Leave them,” Maya told him. “Come here.”
He climbed carefully against her side. She could feel his heart beating through the royal-blue hoodie he had insisted on wearing because it had deep pockets.
The moving truck should not have been there.
They were supposed to leave tomorrow. A pipe had burst in the upstairs bathroom of the small house Ruth rented to them. Part of the ceiling and floor needed work, and the repairs would be easier with the family elsewhere for two weeks.
Maya and Nate had agreed to stay at Ruth’s house together. They had discussed where Eli would sleep, where the crib would go later, and how Nate would get him to school.
That morning, Nate had been called to an electrical repair job. Maya was upstairs sorting clothes when she heard truck doors close outside. She came down to find strangers carrying furniture toward the driveway.
Ruth said the pickup had been moved forward. Nate had agreed. Everything was arranged.
Then Maya noticed Eli’s things lined up separately beside the door.
His pillow. His dinosaurs. His school shoes. The blue box he had decorated with a green stegosaurus.
When she asked where they were going, Ruth told her to get out of the way.
Now Maya sat on the bottom stair while the mover, Tom Salazar, brought her phone. She called Nate herself. When he did not answer immediately, she left a short message and called the number on her prenatal paperwork.
Ruth looked toward the men waiting by the truck.
“I booked this job. We can’t waste the whole morning.”
“We’re pausing,” Tom said. “Nobody’s things are leaving until we understand the delivery.”
Maya looked up.
“The delivery?”
Tom turned the clipboard so she could see it.
The main household was listed for Ruth’s home on Briar Lane. Beneath it was another stop, in another town.
Eighty-seven Cedar Ridge Road.
Her father’s address.
Beside that second stop, someone had written: CHILD’S ROOM. BLUE BOXES.
Eli looked from the clipboard to his mother.
“Which house are you going to?”