Chapter 2 - The Red Living Room
The blood was dripping off the tip of my nose onto the cream-colored braided rug, blooming in dark, jagged stars between my splayed fingers.
Every heartbeat sent a thumping hammer of pressure behind my left eyeball. The pain was sickening, a deep, nauseating throb that made the room tilt at an impossible thirty-degree angle. Through my clear right eye, I watched Jolene stand over me, holding the broken, jagged stem of the crystal glass like a shank. Her breathing was ragged, her chest heaving, but the fury in her face had settled into something worse: an intoxicating rush of absolute, permitted cruelty.
“Look at what you made me do,” Jolene whispered, her eyes wide, dancing with manic adrenaline. “Look at you, Mave. Look at the mess you made on Mom’s rug.”
“Give me the phone,” I gasped, trying to push myself up on my right arm. My work jacket was heavy, soaked through at the shoulder with a sickening blend of Pinot Grigio and my own blood. “I need... I need stitches. It won't stop bleeding.”
“You don't need stitches,” Beatrice said from the hallway arch. She had retrieved her glass from the side table and was standing with her arms crossed, watching me bleed with the detached curiosity of an inspector observing an uncooperative tenant. “A butterfly bandage and some witch hazel will close that right up. You’ve always had thin skin, Mave. Just like your father. Any little scratch and you act like you’re on your deathbed.”
“Mom, the glass shattered on my skull,” I choked out, a wave of cold sweat breaking across my neck. “There are pieces in my scalp. I can feel them grinding.”
“Then sit on the sofa so you don’t ruin the floorboards,” Beatrice snapped. “And hand over your phone.”
I didn't move. My right hand, buried deep inside the fleece-lined pocket of my canvas work jacket, closed around the cold, textured aluminum of my company-issued iPhone.
In logistics, you learn that redundancies save lives. When an interstate freezes over in Nebraska, you don’t sit in the median and pray; you reroute through Iowa before the diesel gels. For three weeks, while I was secretly signing my lease and redirecting my salary, I had configured my phone’s hardware accessibility settings. Five rapid clicks of the lock button would trigger an automated SOS sequence: an emergency broadcast to 911 with real-time GPS telemetry, accompanied by an instant high-priority text alert to the two emergency contacts stored in my enterprise profile.
One of those contacts was Rosalind Mercer. The other was the central dispatch desk at the freight terminal, which was staffed twenty-four hours a day by six men who had known my father and who had spent three years watching me work eighty-hour weeks to support two parasites.
My thumb found the small, raised button through the canvas fabric.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
A faint, high-frequency vibration buzzed against my hip. The silent distress beacon was away.
“Mave,” Jolene said, stepping closer, the jagged crystal stem glinting beneath the ceiling fixture. “Mom told you to hand over the phone. And your purse. You’re going to sit down at the kitchen table, you’re going to log into your rental portal, and you’re going to submit the cancellation request while we watch.”
“And what if I don't?” I asked, forcing my head up. The room spun violently, nausea clawing at the back of my throat, but I kept my right eye locked onto hers. “What are you going to do, Jolene? Hit me again? Finish the job? What’s your plan when the neighbors ask why an ambulance is parked in the driveway?”
“No ambulance is coming to this house,” Beatrice said, her voice dropping into that terrifying, maternal cadence she used when she was rewriting reality. “If anyone asks, you fell down the cellar stairs while carrying the laundry basket. You’ve been clumsy since you were a toddler. The doctor at the clinic knows me. He knows how devoted your sister is. He’ll sign off on a concussion protocol, and you’ll take two weeks of medical leave from that warehouse.”
“Two weeks,” Jolene purred, a triumphant, sickening smile spreading across her lips. “Two weeks in bed, Mave. We’ll take care of you. We’ll take your laptop so you don’t strain your eyes. We’ll handle your bank accounts so the bills don’t fall behind. You won't have to worry about a single thing.”
They weren't just trying to stop me from leaving on Sunday.
They were staging a conservatorship.
The realization hit me with the force of an oncoming freight train. They didn't want my cooperation anymore; they wanted my total legal and financial incapacitation. If I were documented as medically unstable, concussed, and dependent, Beatrice could petition the county probate court for temporary emergency guardianship. She had done it to my grandmother twelve years ago, siphoning the old woman’s pension into an auxiliary account while leaving her in a Medicaid nursing facility in Zanesville until she died of pneumonia.
“The phone,” Jolene repeated, lunging forward with her free hand, reaching for the pocket of my jacket.
I didn't wait for her fingers to close around the canvas.
With every ounce of leverage left in my core, I drove the heavy, steel-plated toe of my right work boot upward, straight into the center of Jolene’s shin.
The impact produced a sickening, hollow thud.
Jolene shrieked—a raw, unvarnished sound of pure agony—and dropped the crystal stem, collapsing sideways onto the coffee table. The wood splintered under her weight, sending magazines, decorative candles, and ceramic coasters flying across the floor.
“You little cunt!” Beatrice screamed, lunging toward me with her hands clawed, her supposed hip replacement forgotten entirely as she moved with shocking, violent speed.
May you like
I rolled to the right, ignoring the shards of glass digging through my denim jeans into my knees. Blood poured into my mouth, warm and copper, but the adrenaline had finally burned through the fog. I scrambled toward the kitchen, my boots slipping on the slick, bloody hardwood, my breath tearing through my lungs in ragged, animal gasps.
“Jolene, get the cellar door!” Beatrice’s voice roared behind me. “Block the kitchen!”
