Someone shoved the stool out from under her.

Her body bucked, her feet kicked, searching frantically for something to rest on, to get the pressure off her neck.

She couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe.

Could only swing and twist, and for just a second, before she lost consciousness, she was sure she could see one of her old flower-head dolls drift down, its daisy face bright as the summer sun.

FOUNDATION

CHAPTER 1

Helen

MAY 18, 2015

The cement mixing drum turned. Fresh concrete poured down the truck’s chute into the form made from wood and rigid foam insulation that rested on a thick bed of gravel. The truck belched diesel fumes into the clean, pine-scented early-morning air.

We are meant to be here, Helen told herself, trying not to choke on the truck’s exhaust. It was eight o’clock in the morning. Normally, she’d be on her way in to work, or perhaps stopping for a latte, pretending she wasn’t a few minutes late. Instead, she was here, surrounded by trees and northern birds whose songs she didn’t recognize, watching workers pour her foundation.

The foundation was the one job she and Nate had hired out, and watching the men in their yellow boots, Helen was glad they’d left this one to the professionals. The men smoothed the concrete over rebar and mesh while Helen studied the scenery around her—the clearing they stood in, the thick woods encircling it, the hill to the west, the little path that led down to the bog to the south. Nate had argued that they could do the work, that a floating slab was easy, but Helen had insisted that a professionally laid out and poured foundation would give them the best start.

“If we’re off even by a quarter of an inch, it’ll screw things up big-time,” Helen had said. “Trust me. This is what the entire house is going to rest on. It’s got to be done right.”

Nate had reluctantly agreed. He was the math and science man. If you hit him hard with numbers and facts, backed up your argument on paper in a scientific way, he’d acquiesce. And yes, in the many months leading up to this morning—in fact, even last night at the motel—Nate had studied countless books on building: Homebuilding for Everyone, Designing and Building a House Your Way, The Owner-Builder’s Guide to Creating the Home of Your Dreams. He’d taken an owner-builder weekend workshop and volunteered a few weekends for Habitat for Humanity, coming home those evenings buzzing with the new high that building gave him, talking nonstop about the walls he’d helped frame, the electrical work they’d roughed in. “It’s the most satisfying work I’ve ever done,” he’d told her.

    But Helen had grown up with a builder father. One of her earliest memories was the summer before first grade, when he brought her to a job site and had her straightening bent nails, teaching her the proper way to hold the hammer, his fingers wrapped around hers. She’d spent weekends and summer vacations pounding nails, hanging drywall, framing doors and windows. She’d helped her father repair the damage from shoddy construction: walls that weren’t plumb with cracked drywall inside, windows improperly installed that had leaked, roofs that were collapsing because of rafters that weren’t strong enough. She knew how hard all this was going to be. For months, Nate had gotten a blissed-out, stupidly contented look whenever he talked about building their dream house. Helen loved his enthusiasm and how he waxed poetic about roof lines and south-facing windows, but still, she got knots in her stomach and gnawed on the inside of her cheeks until she tasted blood.

She reached for Nate’s hand now as the cement poured, gave him a nervous squeeze.

We are meant to be here, she told herself again. I am the one who put all this in motion. This is my dream. It was some shit her therapist back in Connecticut had taught her—how she could shape her own reality by giving herself these affirmations whenever she felt the ground shifting underneath her.

Nate squeezed her hand back—once, twice, three quick bursts, like a code, a secret code that said We’re here; we did it! She could feel the excitement thrumming through him.

Two of the workmen in yellow boots carefully pulled a board over the rough surface of the slab, making it level.

* * *

. . .

She might have been the one to set things in motion, but they were here, really, because of Nate. Almost a year and a half ago now, Helen’s father dropped dead from a heart attack, and Helen—normally so confident about every aspect of her life—felt herself floundering. Helen began feeling stuck and unhappy, believing that there had to be more to life than waking up each morning and going to work, even though it was a job she loved: teaching American history to bright-eyed middle schoolers. Her job gave her a sense of purpose, made her feel genuinely useful and like she was making a difference—but it still wasn’t enough. Her father’s death had been a wake-up call—a warning that she, too, would die one day, perhaps sooner than expected, perhaps without warning, and it was entirely possible that she wasn’t living the life she’d been meant to live. The thought filled her with dread, with a sinking leaden feeling that encroached on everything.

    “What is it you want?” Nate had asked one evening. He saw Helen’s new angst as a puzzle to unravel, a problem to solve.