The porch chime rang just as I thought I might black out.

Through the pounding in my skull and the blood slipping warm past my ear, I heard my mother’s voice through the intercom.

‘Open the door, Brenda.

Now.’

Everything upstairs went still.

For one strange second, the whole house seemed to hold its breath with me.

Chris muttered a curse.

Brenda hissed, ‘Don’t say anything.’

And Aiden stood at the front door with his hand still resting on the deadbolt he had just turned after watching me crash to the floor.

That was the detail that kept burning through the pain.

He had seen me.

He had not run to me.

He had locked me in.

My right arm was twisted under me at an angle that made my stomach turn.

Every breath scraped across my ribs like broken glass.

The tile felt cold against my cheek, and I could taste metal in the back of my throat.

Above me, Brenda lowered her voice into that fake trembling tone she used whenever she wanted to look like the injured party.

‘Tell her to leave,’ she whispered to Aiden.

‘No police.

We handle this ourselves.’

But my mother had not come alone.

Red and blue lights started flashing across the front curtains.

She had called 911 while driving.

Aiden finally unlocked the door.

My mother, Naomi Collins, stepped inside in a dark coat thrown over her work clothes.

She did not rush.

She did not shout.

She walked in with the kind of stillness that only comes from someone who has already made up her mind.

Then she saw me.

The stillness hardened.

She crossed the foyer in three quick steps and dropped to her knees beside me.

‘Stay with me, baby,’ she said, one hand steadying my shoulder without moving my body.

‘Don’t try to sit up.’

Then her eyes lifted past me, up toward the stair landing.

The tiny red light above the hall was still blinking.

Her jaw tightened.

‘Good,’ she said under her breath.

Brenda sprang into performance instantly.

‘She lost control,’ she cried.

‘She started mouthing off, she slipped, and now she’s trying to make us look bad.’

Chris added, ‘I never hit her.’

Aiden said nothing.

My mother did not waste a second arguing with any of them.

She looked at the first responding officer and said, ‘Please keep everyone away from the staircase, the router, and my daughter’s phone.’

The officer turned sharply toward her.

‘Why?’

‘Because there is evidence in this house,’ she said.

‘And if any of them touch it, I want that noted.’

That was the first moment I saw fear move across Chris’s face.

The EMTs came in fast after that.

Someone cut my sleeve.

Someone else checked my pupils.

They slid a brace under my neck and asked my name, the date, whether I could feel my fingers.

I answered some of it.

Some of it I could not.

When they lifted me onto the stretcher, pain shot through my side so hard I cried out.

Chris looked away.

Brenda kept wringing her hands and saying, ‘This is all a misunderstanding,’ like repeating it enough times could turn violence into an accident.

As they wheeled me past the dining table, my mother noticed the half-eaten dinner, Brenda’s overturned