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Part 1, Alice, Chapters 1-2

• Alice Goodwin recalls awakening to a wailing siren one morning last June but all is well on the farm she shares with her husband, Howard, and their two daughters, Emma and Claire.

• During the school year, Alice is a nurse at an elementary school but in the summers she and her friend, Theresa Collins, take turns watching her daughters and Theresa's daughters, Audrey and Lizzy.

• One morning Theresa drops off her girls and Alice is slow to notice that Lizzy is missing.
• Suspecting that Lizzy has gone to the pond, Alice panics, finds Lizzy's lifeless body there and performs ineffective CPR.

• Alice believes that the paramedics will save Lizzy in spite of the fact that Alice knows the child is dead.

• Alice spends three agonizing days and nights in the hospital lounge where Robbie Mackessy's mother sneers at her.

• Robbie is one of Alice's...

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