Raising The Stakes. Sandra Marton

       PROLOGUE

      IN THE darkness of the hot summer night, Dawn lay curled like a baby in its mother’s womb as she listened to the frantic slap, slap, slap of the silk moth’s wings against the screen.

      She couldn’t see the moth, not from here in the back bedroom, but she knew it was outside the kitchen window, shredding its beautiful wings in a useless attempt to reach the light.

      The silk moth had turned up at dusk, right after she’d fed Tommy and put him to bed for the night.

      “Sleep tight, sweetheart,” she’d whispered, and he’d given her his biggest, brightest three-year-old smile.

      “An’ don’t let the bed bugs bite,” her son had replied, as he always did.

      Dawn had kissed him, loving his sweet, baby scent. Tommy had rolled onto his belly and she’d drawn a light blanket over his upraised rump. Her smile had faded as she’d shut the door to his room and looked around the cabin, trying to see it through Harman’s eyes. Did she miss anything when she dusted earlier? Had she put all Tommy’s toys away?

      She’d paused beside the sofa, smoothed down the flowered chenille throw that covered the seat cushion where the spring had popped. Everything looked fine but what looked fine to her didn’t necessarily look that way to her husband, especially on Friday nights when he cashed his paycheck at the Foodco and then stopped for drinks on the way home.

      It didn’t always happen that way. Once in a while, Harman just came straight home. Those times weren’t perfect. He still liked things exactly as he liked them. “Everything in order,” he called it, “the way a man’s entitled, in his own home.” But it was easier on nights when he didn’t stop at the bar. Without liquor in him, he was still surly and he’d talk mean, too, but he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t—

      Dawn blanked her mind to the rest.

      The thing to do was keep busy, not notice that if Harman were heading directly for the cabin, he’d have been here an hour ago. She took a breath, glanced in the spotted oval mirror that hung over the table near the door. Did she look okay? Not too tired? Harman didn’t like her to look tired. It was the baby’s fault, he’d say, when she yawned too much or her eyes didn’t sparkle the way he liked. The baby was sapping her energy. Once she’d made the mistake of saying no, no, it wasn’t like that. The baby was the joy of her life.

      “I am the joy of your life,” Harman had said coldly. “You remember that, girl.”

      She would. Yes, she would. Because it wasn’t how he’d looked at her that had scared her, or how he’d sounded. It was the way he’d looked at Tommy afterward, as if their son was a trespasser in a world that had been perfect until he’d been born. It had never been perfect, not ever, not from the day after the wedding when she’d thoughtlessly left her lipstick and comb on the bathroom sink…

      Dawn spun away from the mirror, went into the kitchen, took a broom from the closet and stepped out onto the sagging porch. It would need sweeping. The tall oaks that surrounded the cabin were what made the mountain so handsome, but Harman didn’t much care for seeing leaves and acorns on the porch.

      “Got to be swept twice a day,” he said.

      So Dawn swept it, twice a day. Sometimes more than that, just to be sure. And that night, as she’d swept, she’d seen the silk moth.

      It wasn’t the first one she’d ever seen. Years ago, when she was a little girl, a moth just like it had come swooping in through the open trailer door. Her mother had screamed as if it was a creature straight out of hell, grabbed a rolled-up magazine