(53) Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

Reading the second half of this book is like watching the World Trade Tower being hit by the plane, I felt my stomach sinking ...

I totally relate to the woman (Mary Beth) in the book who talked about how she befriended her neighbor as the two sets of children played together. A home-maker's world is generally as big as her house if she does not own a car.(after the third child arrives, it gets increasingly difficult to take the entire gang out anyway!) After talking to a few children under the age of six days and nights for a few weeks, it would be stressful to suddenly have to converse with more than two adults at one go.(Around that period of my life, I was living in a small town, involved with a group of mothers from other big cities.)  How was Mary Beth to know that her neighbor's marriage would unravel after the second child drowned in front of her own eyes? Or who would foresee that the lovable boy(the elder boy of the neighbor) would grow up to stalk her daughter, and later to kill her husband, son and daughter all at one go?

If there is any one point she could turn back, it was in avoiding her neighbor's husband with roving eyes like plague right from the start. But I suppose she is not perfect. Once her affair with that unfaithful neighbor was known to his wife, I suppose the die is set. She not only lost her best friend, she made a life-long enemy. Goodness know what the neurotic woman did to drive the elder son to Mary Beth's house.

After spending hundreds of thousands of hours in Mary Beth's house, this boy ate numerous meals but turn around and at one swipe murdered three and hurt one seriously. It is proverbial like biting the hand that feeds him. Of course it is an incident that is one in a million, probably. Interestingly Mary Beth's husband actually did not want his wife to socialize with that family. I wonder if he objected to the father's philandering or he did not like his wife to spend too much time with a woman that his children referred to as crazy. I guess we are all affected to some extent by the company we keep. Certain decisions have a drastic effect on our lives!