The Teacher

From the outside her life looks like the one other people are working toward. A husband, children, a house, a job she is good at. Underneath it she has been keeping something to herself for a long time, on the understanding that if it ever came out it would take everything with it.

Then the police are at the door. One of her students has accused her of something she knows she did not do, and the accusation is specific enough, and public enough, that being innocent is not much use to her. As she is taken away from her family, what she is most sure of is that this is not a misunderstanding: someone knows what she has been hiding, and has built a trap precisely shaped to it.

Danielle Stewart narrates in first person and withholds the secret itself for most of the book, so the reader spends it working out what could possibly be worth this, and who would have had to be watching her for years to use it.