Chapter 1 - The Shattered Glass
“I spoke with the agency,” I said. The words fell into the warm, scented air of the living room like ice cubes dropped into hot oil.
My mother, Beatrice, didn’t flinch. She sat in her oversized orthopedic armchair with her feet propped on a velvet ottoman, a half-empty stem of Pinot Grigio resting against her knee. On the sofa opposite her, Jolene was stretched out like an indolent house cat, her bare feet tucked under a fleece throw, her phone casting a pale blue rectangle of light across her cheekbones.
“Good,” Beatrice said without looking up from the television screen, where two strangers were shouting at each other on a tropical terrace. “Then you know we don’t need an outside person rummaging through our pantry. A stranger in the house would have undone six months of my progress. You can call them back tomorrow to get the deposit refunded.”
“I’m not calling them back for a refund,” I said. I stayed standing in the hallway archway, my heavy work jacket still zipped to my throat, my steel-toed boots caked with gray road slush from the freight yard. “And they aren't coming back because you canceled them. But you need to understand something clearly, Mom. I am moving on Sunday. My signature is on a commercial lease. The truck is booked for eight in the morning. Whether you have Genevieve here or you let Jolene learn how to boil water, I will not be sleeping under this roof.”
Jolene’s phone lowered by two inches. Her eyes, heavy with mascara and lazy venom, locked onto mine. “Mave, shut up. Nobody wants to hear your dramatic little exit speech. We’re watching the finale.”
“I’m not giving a speech,” I said, looking straight at my sister. “I’m giving you forty-eight hours of operational notice. The electric account transfers out of my name on Monday at midnight. The internet account is being terminated. The joint debit card you’ve been using for grocery deliveries has had its overdraft protection removed, and my payroll direct deposit has already been redirected to an account at Fifth Third Bank that neither of you has access to.”
The silence that followed was not quiet. It was the sudden, pressurized drop in cabin air before a bulkhead gives way.
Beatrice set her wine glass down on the side table with a sharp, ceramic clack. She didn't reach for her cane. She stood up—her supposedly fragile, rebuilt hip bearing her full weight without so much as a grimace—and crossed the braided rug. The sweet, sharp reek of cheap fermented grapes and menthol cigarettes rolled off her like exhaust.
“You think you’re smart,” Beatrice whispered. She was four inches shorter than me, but she had spent twenty-nine years weaponizing her proximity. “You think because you wear those filthy boots and stare at computer screens all day that you’re independent. Who paid the property taxes while you were in high school? Who kept the heat on when your father had the decency to drop dead in a ditch?”
“My father died of a heart attack in an operating room,” I said, my teeth clenched so tightly my jaw ached. “And his union life insurance paid off the mortgage on this house six weeks after his funeral. You didn't pay the taxes, Mom. I found the tax bills from two years ago in the desk drawer. I paid them. With my bonus check from the intermodal terminal.”
Behind Beatrice, Jolene rose from the sofa. She didn’t move with the sluggishness of someone recovering from an anxiety flare; she moved with the coiled, territorial aggression of a spoiled predator whose feeder had just been padlocked. She carried her wine glass by the stem, her knuckles white against the heavy cut crystal.
“You selfish little bitch,” Jolene hissed, stepping around our mother. “You think you’re going to leave me here to wipe her ass? You think I’m going to spend my twenties and thirties playing nursemaid while you live in some luxury high-rise downtown, telling all your corporate friends how tragic your family is?”
“You’re thirty-two, Jolene,” I said, stepping backward toward the front door. “You’re three years older than I am. If you don’t want to take care of her, hire a service with your event-planning money.”
“I don’t have to hire anyone!” Jolene screamed. The veins in her neck corded into rigid cords under her cream sweater. “You owe us! You’ve always owed us! You were born to take care of this house!”
I reached behind me, my hand finding the brass handle of the front door. “I’m leaving tonight. I’ll sleep in my car at the terminal.”
I turned the knob.
I never heard Jolene cross the carpet. I only felt the sudden, violent displacement of air against the left side of my skull, followed immediately by the dull, explosive crack of heavy crystal impacting bone.
The world didn't go black; it went blinding, kaleidoscopic white.
The shockwave tore through my ear canal like a sonic boom. The wine glass didn't bounce; it shattered into dozens of thick, jagged shards that drove into my scalp and temple with hydraulic force. Warm, viscous liquid cascaded down the left side of my face—red wine mixed with hot, arterial blood that flooded instantly into my eye socket, blinding me in a wash of stinging crimson.
My knees gave way. My shoulder slammed into the wall, tearing through the floral wallpaper before my hip struck the baseboard. I hit the hardwood floor on my hands and knees, gasping for air that felt like broken glass in my windpipe.
“Jolene!” I screamed, my fingers scrabbling against the floorboards, trying to wipe the blood from my left eye, but my sleeve only smeared the thick, metallic heat across my cheek. “Mom! Call an ambulance! Mom!”
Above me, through the red haze and the ringing in my ears, I saw Beatrice move.
She didn't reach for a towel. She didn't drop to her knees. She didn't scream at Jolene.
She stepped over my splayed legs, her orthopedic slippers scuffing lightly against the floorboards, reached out a steady, liver-spotted hand, and gripped the brass deadbolt of the heavy oak front door.
Click.
May you like
The bolt slid into the strike plate with the finality of a prison gate. Then she took the key from the pocket of her cardigan, turned it in the lower lock, and dropped it into her brassiere.
“Don’t let her leave, Jolene,” Beatrice ordered, her voice dead, flat, and completely devoid of human panic. “Not until she promises to cancel that apartment.”
