Adara finally felt like she could take a deep breath without collapsing into gut-wrenching sobs afterward. The drive home was quiet and uneventful, something Adara relished. She turned the radio to the classical music station, let one arm dangle out the open window of her sedan, and enjoyed the ride home. There was no need to careen through seedy side neighborhoods; no reason to risk the life of pedestrians and construction workers as she sought to ensure that her daughter was not in danger.

Adara felt like she was seeing everything for the first time; the sign for “Dinkle’s Donuts” never looked so scrumptious and colorful; the local pet supplies store seemed to be bustling with happy, normal people and their black Labradors. Even the garbage truck workers seemed to be laughing and enjoying themselves as they heaved bulging black bags into the back of the truck. Yes, life was good when her daughter was still alive.

“Mom, are you okay?” Paige was watching at her quizzically.

“Yes, I’m fine honey, why?”

“You’ve been sighing to yourself the whole way home.”

Paige shrugged, unsure if she should reveal that her daughter had possibly been in grave danger. “I’m just in one of those moods.”

Paige nodded and resumed staring out the window. ‘One of those moods’ held a lot of weight in their family, and Paige knew better than anyone just how much the dreams and predictions could disrupt daily life. Adara regretted that her daughter had to suffer through such strangeness, such unpredictability. Perhaps this was one of the benefits of a psychologist raising a daughter – she didn’t have to pay someone else to counsel her daughter about the inexplicable and often erratic behavior of her mother during her formative years. And someday, Adara knew that she would reveal all to Paige. But not yet; there was still too much uncertainty, and besides, a 16-year old didn’t have much interest in the ugly complexities of the adult mind.

Well-trimmed bushes and vibrant flowerbeds dotted the entrance to their neighborhood, causing memories of her throat-choking morning to drift to the distant recesses of her mind. Paige seemed to perk up as they made slow swerves through the winding roads of the neighborhood. As they pulled into the driveway, the GPS Navigation system chimed coolly, “You have arrived.”

Paige scampered out of the car and into the house. Adara took her time gathering her things out of the car, deciding once and for all that she would not be returning to work that day. Across the street, her neighbor Ken was watering his lawn, looking silly as he always did in a plastic green visor and knee-high socks.

“Well you’re home early, Adara!” He grinned toothily and waved.

“It’s shaping up to be a different kind of day,” she said, walking slowly to her mailbox. “Today I’m just going to stay home and kick back.”

“Sounds like a mighty fine idea to me! Oh, by the way, someone was around here earlier looking for you,” Ken said.

“Oh really? Who was it?” Adara pulled open the mailbox; nothing. She’d beaten the mail man for once.

“Couldn’t tell ya,” he said. “Might have been Franco, he was in and out real fast.”

            “Must have been,” she replied. “I was in a bit of a hurry earlier and he must have stopped by to check on me.”

            As Adara made her way up the driveway, Ken called out, “Did Franco buy a new car?”

            She paused and turned. “No…why?”

            Ken shrugged. “Just didn’t recognize this one. Maybe it was a friend’s car.” He offered a smile. “You have a good one!” Ken pretended to spray water at her, the same way he did everyday. Adara offered the same forced laugh and feigned surprise and trudged toward the house, ready to collapse on the couch and nurse a hot cup of tea.

            As she stepped through the door, she noticed Paige was standing in the middle of the living room, head craned as she studied something sitting on the coffee table. When she heard Adara enter, her head snapped up.

            “Oh, hey mom.” She cleared her throat. “Uh, I think you left this out here.” She picked up a book and handed it over to her.

The familiar heaviness of the book caused Adara’s stomach to tighten and sink. She opened it to the first page just to be sure, and sure enough the cryptic, half-asleep scrawl of her late-night words stared up at her, ink fading in and out as though a reflection of her dreams.

            “My dream diary,” She whispered. Louder, she asked, “Where did you find this?” She’d heard the delicate tremble that edged her words, and hoped that her daughter didn’t notice.

            Paige shrugged, but something in her eyes told her that Paige knew she’d seen something extremely private. “It was right out here on the coffee table.”

            Adara swallowed hard, struggling to remember where she’d placed her diary earlier that morning. She almost never brought it into the living room, not where any number of prying, curious eyes could read it. Especially not with Franco coming and going, when he was so hell-bent on seeing what it was she wrote in there. Adara knew better than to leave her diary out for the world to see. But maybe it had slipped her mind; with the traumatizing dreams she’d been having lately, she was surprised she didn’t mess up more.

            “I’m going to put this back in my room,” she said. “You go rest up, okay? There’s Midol in the kitchen cupboard; take two pills with a glass of water and get your heating pad.”

            Paige rolled her eyes. “I know, Mom, this isn’t the first time this has happened…”

            Adara barely heard her daughter’s teenage grumbles as she headed to her bedroom. She could hardly hear anything over the stampede of her heartbeat. How could I forget to put this away? Suddenly, Ken’s words came crashing back to her. Did Franco see this?

            Adara took a deep breath to soothe the hot waves of nausea that were creeping up her throat. She was ready for the welcome coolness of her bedroom, ready to lay down and take a deep, hard nap to forget that any of this day had really happened.

            She pushed open the heavy mahogany of her bedroom door and flipped on the light switch. She headed immediately to her bedside drawer, the one kept under lock and key, to stow her diary so that Franco’s eyes didn’t have any more chances to roam where they weren’t welcome.

            She sat on her bed and fumbled with the lock on the drawer for a moment before something made her stop. The hairs on the back of her neck had gone rigid; something wasn’t right. The air in the bedroom felt strange to her, and it was producing inside of her the same type of vigilant dread that always preceded a natural disaster or horrific dream. The bad energy in the room was palpable now, she could feel it drifting through the air and over to her like a lazy exhale of cigarette smoke. She took a deep breath, trying to ready herself for whatever it was that was pending, and almost choked on the scent of fresh paint. Her senses went into overdrive and a voice in her head was urging her to look behind her. She knew better than to ignore it.

With a quick prayer,  Adara turned on her heels. When her eyes lighted on the scene in front of her, she drew in a sharp inhale that was like a razor against the back of her throat. The diary fell out of her hands and thudded loudly against the wood floor. A deep, guttural scream scraped its way up her throat, begging to escape. She clamped her hands over her mouth as hard as she could, struggling to contain the violent heaving of her chest as her eyes washed over the scene in front of her again and again.

The words “THOU SHALT NOT KILL” were slashed across her wall in black paint. Taped to her dresser mirror was a picture of the corpse of Nona Flores. Right next to it was a picture of Adara cut from last week’s newspaper.