My husband cooked dinner, and right after my son and I ate, we collapsed Pretending to be unconscious, I heard him on the phone saying, "It's done... soon they will both be gone."

The heavy tread of Daniel’s work boots hit the linoleum with a deliberate, unhurried rhythm.

I kept my eyelids clamped shut, my cheek pressed against the freezing tile, fighting the wild hammering in my chest that threatened to rattle my ribs. Beneath my shirt, the plastic freezer bag pressed against the skin of my waist, the cold condensation stinging like ice water.

Daniel didn't check our pulses this time.

He dropped something heavy on the counter—a metallic clank that smelled immediately of industrial solvent and raw kerosene.

Then came the sharp, unmistakable click-click-click of the gas range.

A hiss followed.

A second burner clicked. Then a third.

The suffocating, sweet-sulfur stench of unburned propane began pouring into the kitchen air.

Through the slits of my lashes, beneath the fringe of my hair, I saw Daniel’s silhouette standing by the stove. He was wearing leather work gloves. In his right hand, he held a long-nosed utility lighter and a scented candle in a glass jar.

He was staging an accidental gas explosion.

He intended to leave the burners open, light the candle on the far dining sideboard as a delayed ignition fuse, and lock the doors from the outside while he established an ironclad alibi at the hardware store across town.

By the time the vapor reached the flame, the house would be an inferno.

Any autopsy would conclude that a mother and son died of carbon monoxide inhalation and smoke before the structure burned.

Daniel stepped toward the center island, placing the candle near the fruit bowl. He struck the lighter.

A tiny yellow flame danced in the dim room.