window I saw the blue flicker of the television on the wall.

Then I heard Darren laugh.

I shouted again, louder, voice cracking this time.

—I fell! Open the door! I think it’s broken!

The door finally swung inward.

Melissa stood there holding a mug of coffee, dressed like she had settled in for the evening.

She looked annoyed, not alarmed.

—Now what happened? —she asked.

—I slipped.

Call an ambulance.

Her eyes went to the groceries.

—Did the eggs break?

Pain does strange things to time.

That sentence seemed to stretch forever before it landed.

Behind her, Darren wandered into view chewing something.

—Man, it’s raining, he said.

—Can’t you get up?

I tried to push myself up with one elbow and nearly screamed.

Cody leaned out from the hallway, saw me on the porch, and then looked back down at his phone.

—Please, I said.

—I need help.

Melissa’s expression hardened.

—You always do this.

I thought I had misheard her again.

—Do what?

Darren answered before she could.

—Make everything our problem, Ethan.

We are not your servants.

The sentence did not just hurt.

It rearranged something in me.

I was lying on the porch of the house I owned, half numb with pain, soaked through, and the three people living under my roof because I had opened my door to them were treating me like an inconvenience.

And in that one still second, every little thing I had excused came crashing back at once.

The insurance notice.

The opened envelopes.

Darren in my office.

Melissa pressing for the mailbox key.

Cody asking odd questions about the house.

I stopped trying to understand them and started seeing them.

I dragged myself over the threshold using my elbows and one good leg, leaving a trail of water across the entry tile.

Melissa stepped aside so I would not brush her pants.

Darren called me dramatic under his breath.

I grabbed the hall table, hauled myself high enough to snatch my phone, and called 911.

Then I looked right at Darren.

—You have five minutes, I said.

He laughed, actually laughed.

—Five minutes for what?

—To get out of my house before I make one more call.

Melissa started in with my name, that wounded older-sister tone she used whenever she wanted me to feel unreasonable.

I cut her off.

—No.

You do not get to stand there with coffee in your hand while I bleed all over my own floor and pretend I’m the problem.

Darren folded his arms.

—You can’t just throw family out.

—Maybe not, I said.

—But I can tell the police why my mail has been opened and why my office drawer was left half out.

That changed both their faces.

Not guilt.

Fear.

I followed Melissa’s eyes down the hallway and saw my office drawer, still not fully closed.

A manila folder stuck out just enough to catch the light.

The ambulance came before I could reach it.

Mrs.

Halpern from next door had heard the shouting and appeared under an umbrella just as the paramedics came up the walk.

She took one look at me on the floor and one look at my sister holding coffee, and her mouth went thin with disgust.

The paramedics splinted my ankle and loaded me into