The Mommy Group

The Mommy Group The Domestic Thriller Collection Ramona Light The Mommy Group © 2023 by Ramona Light All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and retrieval systems, without express written permission by the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. None of the characters in the book are based on actual persons. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely and unintentionally coincidental. Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66 Epilogue Also By Ramona Light Chapter 1 I never wanted to move to this town. Now that it’s a reality, I wish I’d been more insistent. The silence is so heavy it’s like I can hear the trees breathing. It feels like someone is hidden just out of sight behind every window, their intense stares burrowing deep into my soul. How can I feel so unsafe in such a supposedly safe town? I want to go home; only I am home. Garland, Iowa, is where I live now, and I need to accept that. Iowa is so different from New York. Of course, a decision as huge as moving a thousand miles across the country always has to be mutual, and this was no different. Sylvia fell in love with this little cul-de-sac the moment she saw it, and my argument that it was too far away from everything we knew got a little quieter as I watched her face light up. How could I say no when her almond-shaped green eyes widened and she said, “Oh, Nina. It’s even more perfect than I ever could have imagined!”? A large moving truck with RENT-A-HAND printed on the side sits at the end of our driveway. Two men in overalls are unloading our plastic-wrapped suede couch as Maddox, our four-year-old son, watches in awe from a safe distance. Maddox is holding an apple in his hand, his mouth ajar as the movers shoulder the couch and slowly edge their way toward his new home. I can hear Sylvia inside, her sweet whistling coming to me clearly on the cool fall breeze. The sound makes my spine tingle, and I smile despite my melancholy. I should be grateful. I know this, yet I can’t shake the feeling that something is off about this place. Moving to a town as picturesque as Garland should be a time of celebration. I need to better appreciate sharing what Sylvia has been gleefully calling our “forever home” with the two people I love most in the world, but something is stopping me from letting go. Is a place seemingly “too perfect” a reason to gripe? If it is, then I should be ashamed. A four-bedroom Tudor-style home with an arched roof, huge, wood-paneled double-hung windows, stone walls, and a front yard that’s bigger than the house I grew up in should be more than enough to make someone happy. All it does is make me feel ungrateful. Everything here looks like the front of a postcard from the 1950s. It all feels posed. Even the mail carrier walking by is moving a little too slowly. A man wearing khaki shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt is mowing his lawn across the street, even though it’s fall and there seems to be no need. When I raise my hand and wave, he drops his eyes. My new neighbors, ladies and gentlemen. There are only six houses in Brookwell. Our little cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Garland seems to have been built with certain buyers in mind—those who like their privacy but still want everyone to see how they live. The three homes on each side of the street back onto lightly wooded areas, while the circular eastern end of the cul-de-sac leads to the deeper woods. I sigh and tuck my hands into my pockets. Sylvia continues to whistle as she arranges the furniture inside. She has an artistic touch that I envy, and it’s one of the reasons I fell so madly in love with her when we first met all those years ago. It’s one of the reasons why I still love her. “Ms. Chaudary?” I turn to see one of the movers standing next to me, holding out a clipboard. He is in his mid-thirties, with thick black hair that looks like it needs a comb run through it and close-set green eyes. Two U-shaped sweat marks have formed on the front of his navy RENT-A-HAND T-shirt, and as I reach for the clipboard, he wipes his forehead with his wrist. “Can you sign, please?” he asks, his thick New York accent making me feel another jab of homesickness. “Sure.” I squiggle my name across the bottom and hand the clipboard back. He nods at me before trudging back to his co-worker, who is leaning against the truck smoking a cigarette. When I look for Maddox, he’s gone, and my heart seems to drop to my knees. Suddenly, all I can see is