One step. Took it so soft it didn’t even creak.

Two steps. Didn’t make a sound on that one either. I stared at my hands, then stared at the ground. I stared at my feet. Lifted them again . . . so slow. Stared at the top stair of the porch. Stepped up onto it without a sound.

I held out the frog and lifted my head, prepared to announce my wonderful new pal—and stopped myself. My father was there. His back was to the door. My mother was on the bed. She wasn’t moving. Her arm was hanging down, almost touching the floor. A long trail of red spilled down it, dripping from her middle finger to form a small puddle on the floor.

Another drop fell with a little splash.

And another. And another.

My father was doing something to her—something I couldn’t see. His arm was cranking back and forth, and the one-roomed home was filled with the sounds of uneven sawing, the rubbing of sharp metal teeth across something solid but wet.

The little fellow in my hand chose exactly this moment to speak.

Gribbit.

Gribbit.

Gribbit.

My father stopped what he was doing. He turned. And I saw . . . and I saw . . . I saw what he was doing. I saw Momma’s right hand hanging by a sliver of skin. I saw the white bones poking through the red, shredded flesh. I saw her eyes gone up in her head, and her mouth open and her skin going pale and gray. And my father had done this to her.

And he had seen me.

I took one step back.

“Now, pretty one . . . now . . .”

I took another step back.

“Miabella.”

Without taking my eyes away from my father’s, I squatted down and put the frog on the edge of the porch. It hopped down and disappeared into the weeds.

“Miabella,” he said again.

But by then I was already running.

My little legs pumped hard, and fast, and my bare feet did not even notice the twigs and roots they stomped across. I was always barefoot, and the naked ground did not intimidate me. It did not slow me.

Footsteps pounded hard behind me, drawing closer until I took a turn through a more narrow place, a place where the trees grew closer together. A place where the ground was soggier, and then downright wet. I was splashing and ducking, and he was not keeping up. I didn’t know where I was going, but my father couldn’t catch me, and that was all that mattered.

“Miabella? Miabella! Miabella!“ He was crying louder, but his voice was growing more distant. I was losing him. I was getting away.

And then I was falling.