A gravel driveway lined with crepe myrtles.
A red barn that had belonged to Blake’s father.
People in town called Blake a hardworking man. They said he was old-fashioned, loyal, family-minded. They shook his hand after church and told me I was lucky.
Lucky.
I used to smile when they said it.
I got very good at smiling.
But luck did not live in that house.
Fear did.
Fear lived in the hallway outside my bedroom.
Fear sat beside me at dinner.
Fear crawled into bed after Blake turned off the lamp and whispered that if I ever left, he would find me before I reached the county line.
I had tried to leave once.
Only once.
I packed a small bag while he was at the feed store. Two pairs of jeans, my birth certificate, sixty-two dollars I had hidden inside a box of tea, and the silver necklace my grandmother left me.
I made it as far as the truck.
Darlene saw me from the porch.
She called Blake.
By sunset, my bag was burned in the fire pit behind the barn, and Blake held my chin in one hand while he told me, very calmly, “You don’t get to embarrass me, Evie. Not in my town.”
After that, I stopped thinking about escape as a door.
I thought about it as a crack in the wall.
Something small.
Something I could hide inside until I was strong enough to break through.
Then came the morning everything changed.
It was February.
Cold, gray, and wet.
The yard was muddy from three days of rain, and the sky looked like dirty cotton stretched over the hills. Blake had been drinking the night before. I knew before he even came downstairs because the floorboards groaned differently under his weight when he was angry.
I was standing at the stove, making eggs I could barely smell without feeling sick.
I had been sick for weeks.
Tired all the time.
Dizzy.
A deep ache had settled in my lower stomach, sharp enough sometimes that I had to press my palm against the sink and breathe through it.
But I had not told Blake.
Pain was dangerous information in that house.
He came into the kitchen wearing yesterday’s jeans and a white undershirt. His hair was messy, his jaw rough with stubble. Darlene was already at the table, dressed for church even though it was not Sunday, pearls at her throat like she was starring in a life better than ours.
Blake looked at the plate in front of him.
Then at me.
“Eggs are cold.”
“They just came off the stove.”
His chair scraped back.
I froze.
Darlene lifted her cup and looked out the window.
Blake took two steps toward me.
“You correcting me now?”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry. I’ll make more.”
“You’re always sorry.”
His hand came so fast I did not have time to turn away.
The slap cracked through the kitchen.
My shoulder hit the cabinet. The spatula clattered to the floor.
Darlene sighed.
“Blake,” she said softly, not because she cared about me, but because she hated noise before coffee.
He grabbed my wrist.
“Outside.”
My stomach dropped.
“Please,” I whispered. “Not today. I don’t feel well.”
That made his eyes sharpen.
“Oh, you don’t feel well?”
He pulled me toward the back door.
I stumbled, catching myself against the wall.
“Maybe you’d feel better if you were a real wife.”
The cold hit me like water.
He dragged me down the porch steps into the muddy yard. My feet sank into the wet grass. The hens scattered near the fence. Somewhere beyond the barn, a dog barked.
Blake shoved me forward.
I dropped to my knees.
Pain flashed through my stomach so violently that for one second, the whole world turned white.
I heard myself gasp.
