I was already half awake. At my age, sleep becomes more negotiation than guarantee, and that night the wind had been tapping a branch against my bedroom window with the patience of a hand that knew I would answer eventually. I looked at the clock, saw the hour, and knew before I even reached for the phone that whatever waited on the other end was not small.
“Mom?”
It was my daughter, Natalie, and something in her voice turned my blood cold.
Not loud. Not hysterical. Worse than that.
Broken.
The kind of broken that comes after someone has spent hours trying not to break at all.
“Natalie,” I said, sitting up so fast the blankets twisted around my knees. “Where are you?”
There was a pause. I heard fluorescent buzzing. A door opening. A man’s voice somewhere close enough to make me hate him on principle.
“I’m at the Ashby County police station,” she whispered. “Please come.”
I was out of bed before she finished the sentence.
“What happened?”
Another pause. Then, in a voice so thin it felt like ice moving through my chest, she said, “Adrian told them I attacked him.”
I closed my eyes for one second.
“Are you hurt?”
“Yes.”