My name is Diane Foster . I am fifty years old, and until that brisk Sunday evening, I operated under the absolute certainty that I knew the man I shared my bed with. Mark Foster and I had built a quiet, unremarkable life. We resided in Carmel, Indiana , occupying a sprawling brick ranch house we’d purchased in the late nineties, back when mortgage rates were a gentle breeze and our joints didn’t protest the weekly lawn mowing. We were childless—not by any grand design, but simply because the universe had charted a different course for us. To fill the void, we poured our souls into our careers, our local church, summer escapes to the cooler air of northern Michigan, and, most rigidly, Sunday dinners with his family.
Every. Single. Sunday.
Judith Foster , my formidable mother-in-law, mandated it. She reigned over the family with an iron grip she disguised as maternal devotion, firmly believing that forced traditions were the only glue keeping her bloodline intact. Dinner commenced at 5:30 PM on the dot. The menu was dictated by the season: heavy pot roasts in the dead of winter, charred steaks in July, and her legendary homemade rolls that, admittedly, surpassed anything you could buy in a bakery. Nobody dared challenge Judith’s itinerary, least of all Mark.
Yet, by the time our sedan idled into his parents’ expansive driveway near Geist Reservoir that fateful afternoon, a cold prickle of unease had already taken root at the base of my neck.
