“He’s not my friend. He’s a guy I worked with.”

“I told you that there was something wrong with him,” she said. She was shaking, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I told you that something was going on, and you acted like I was crazy.”

She was right. I’d brushed off her worry when she’d tried to tell me that something was wrong with her friend. I hadn’t taken it seriously. We’d known that Sean was an asshole, but that hadn’t necessarily meant that the guy was abusive. I couldn’t have predicted how crazy he would turn out to be.

“I went with you.” I threw up my hands. “I went to help her just like you asked. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t want you to, but we went anyway.”

“And I did want to go,” she said, deflated. “And our baby died because of it.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, that’s not what I meant. You said—”

“But it’s what you think. It’s what everyone thinks.” She glanced at me and then looked away. “I put us in danger.”

“Sarai,” I said, taking a step toward her. She didn’t want me to touch her—I knew she didn’t—but it took everything I had not to wrap my arms around her. “I don’t think that.”

“I wanted to run to the rescue,” she said dully. “Because Hailey finally decided to leave him.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I replied. “You had no idea what Sean would do. None of us had any idea.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said, taking a step backward. “I have to go to work.”

I watched her as she retreated, pulling on her coat and picking up her laptop bag before she headed toward our front door. As she reached it, she paused.

“I’ll talk to my adviser,” she said, her back to me. “Call a moving company. There’s nothing left for me here.”

*  *  *

The next two days with Adinah and Isaac were a marathon of keeping my mouth shut and holding myself back whenever they said something to upset her. Sarai seemed to do just fine dealing with them, but I still couldn’t stand the way they tried to bulldoze her. There was no doubt in my mind that her aunt and uncle loved her and were worried about her, but they were so controlling that it overshadowed everything they did.