Chương 1
"""The fourth screw came loose just as a floorboard creaked somewhere above me.
I froze with the bottle opener clenched in my bloody hand and listened so hard that the pounding of my own pulse seemed loud enough to wake the entire house.
A toilet flushed upstairs.
Water moved through the pipes behind the wall.
Then silence settled over the house again.
I eased the last screw onto the tile instead of letting it drop and pulled the metal grate toward me.
The opening behind it was narrower than I had hoped, but when I slid my fingers inside, I could just reach the lower arm of the deadbolt.
It took three attempts because my fingertips were slick with blood.
When the lock finally turned, the tiny click sounded enormous.
I pulled the back door open six inches and cold rain blew across my face.
For a moment I simply lay there breathing it in.
Wet pavement, mud, cut grass, somebody's fireplace two houses away.
Ordinary smells from an ordinary neighborhood where people were sleeping behind locked doors while I crawled out of mine with a broken leg.
The threshold was worse than the kitchen floor.
My left heel caught against it, and the movement sent such a violent bolt through my leg that black spots crowded my vision.
I pressed my forehead against the wet concrete patio until the nausea passed.
Then I dragged myself forward.
Our nearest neighbors, the Carters, lived less than sixty yards away.
I had waved to Denise Carter dozens of times while collecting mail, although Beatrice disliked her because Denise once asked why I never came to the neighborhood book club anymore.
Mason had answered for me.
“She gets overwhelmed in groups.”
I had stood beside him smiling like an idiot.
Now Denise's porch light looked impossibly far away.
I made it across the patio and into the grass before my strength failed.
Rain soaked through my pajamas within seconds.
I tried shouting, but what came out was little more than a hoarse sound.
The Carter house remained dark.
I dug my elbows into the lawn and pulled again.
Mud packed beneath my fingernails.
My injured leg dragged behind me.
Halfway across the yard, a motion light snapped on.
A dog began barking.
I stopped moving.
The barking grew frantic.
A bedroom light appeared in the Carter house.
Then another.
The back door opened, and a man's voice called into the rain.
“Who's there?”
I tried to answer.
Nothing came.
A flashlight swept across the grass, passed over me, then jerked back.
“Oh, Jesus.”
Denise came running behind her husband in a bathrobe and rubber gardening shoes.
When she reached me, she dropped to her knees and immediately pulled out her phone.
“Don't move her, Tom.”
“I wasn't going to.”
“You were reaching for her.”
“I was checking if she was breathing.”
“I'm breathing,” I managed.
Denise looked at me, and something in her face changed when she saw my leg.
“Who did this?”
I grabbed her wrist.
“Call 911.”
“I am.”
“Don't call Mason.”
Her eyes stayed on mine.
“I won't.”
Those three words nearly broke me more completely than the rolling pin had.
The ambulance arrived eleven minutes later.
A sheriff's deputy arrived with it because Denise had told the dispatcher that I appeared to have been assaulted.
The paramedics cut away the lower half of my pajama leg, stabilized the injury, started an IV, and kept asking questions I struggled to answer through chattering teeth.
One of them, a woman named Kayla, asked whether I felt safe returning home.
“No.”
She stopped adjusting the blanket.
“Okay.”
She said it quietly, without surprise and without asking me to justify it.
The deputy crouched near the stretcher while rain collected along the brim of his hat.
“Who injured you, ma'am?”
“My mother-in-law.”
“With what?”
“A rolling pin.”
“Was anyone else present?”
“My husband.”
“Did he participate?”
I looked toward my house.
No lights had come on.
They were still sleeping.
“He wouldn't let me call an ambulance.”
The deputy's expression tightened.
“Did he physically prevent you?”
“They took my phone.”
“Tonight?”
“Months ago.”
That answer changed the questions.
At the hospital, X-rays showed fractures of both the tibia and fibula, with enough displacement that the orthopedic surgeon wanted to operate that morning.
There was also concern about nerve involvement because of the numbness in my foot.
The words came at me through pain medication and exhaustion.
Surgery.
Pins.
Possibly a plate.
Months of rehabilitation.
No driving for a while.
No work in the office.
A nurse named Elena placed my belongings in a clear plastic bag, including the bottle opener I had somehow carried all the way into the Carters' yard.
When she noticed the cuts across my palm, she asked what had happened.
“I used it to get out.”
She looked at the cheap piece of metal for a second.
Then she labeled the bag and set it inside the cabinet beside my bed.
I asked whether I could use a phone.
She handed me the room phone.
My parents were in North Carolina, and I stared at their number on a scrap of paper for almost a minute before dialing.
My mother answered on the fourth ring with a sleepy, frightened hello.
“Mom.”
There was a pause.
“Hannah?”
I hadn't heard her say my name like that in months.
Not angry.
Not accusing.
Just relieved.
“Honey, where are you?”
“I'm in the hospital.”
The silence on the other end frightened me more than if she had screamed.
My father took the phone a minute later and kept asking which hospital until I finally managed to tell him.
“We're leaving now,” he said.
“Dad, it's four in the morning.”
“I know what time it is.”
“You don't have to drive tired.”
“Hannah.”
His voice cracked on my name.
“We're coming.”
After the call, I cried for the first time.
May you like
Not because of my leg.
I cried because I had spent nearly a year believing the distance between my parents and me was partly my own doing.
