Chapter 1: The Games
My life, to any outside observer, was a picture-perfect suburban dream. I was thirty-four years old, a successful freelance graphic designer who worked from the bright, sunlit kitchen island of our beautiful four-bedroom colonial home. Mark, my husband of six years, was a charming, well-respected regional sales director for a medical supply company. He wore tailored suits, coached weekend little league games, and possessed an easy, booming laugh that made him the life of every neighborhood barbecue.
But my most treasured accomplishment, the absolute center of my universe, was my five-year-old daughter, Sophie. She was a sweet, gentle, highly imaginative child with a head full of messy blonde curls and a heart too big for her tiny chest.
Over the last few months, however, a dark, heavy cloud had begun to settle over our perfect home.
Sophie had changed. The bubbly, talkative girl who used to sing at the top of her lungs while drawing at the kitchen table had become withdrawn, jumpy, and prone to sudden, inexplicable fits of crying. She started wetting the bed again. She stopped wanting to go to the park. But the most alarming change was her newfound, visceral terror of bath time.