An awful sound explodes from the living room.

Our picture window breaking into a thousand pieces.

He lets me go and doubles back. “Get in the rec room, Sloane, and don’t move!”

Get in the rec room. Move. Don’t move. Move. I crawl after him, crawl until I see the living room carpet glittering in the sunlight. Glass is everywhere. I watch the woman who was on our lawn writhe through our window, oblivious to the leftover shards and blades of it digging into her legs and hands. She streaks blood on the white sill and as soon as she’s through, steadies herself on our pale yellow couch. She leaves a red handprint in her wake. She doesn’t even look like she knows where she is. She pauses, rolls her shoulders and inhales. The air rattles through her lungs and makes me breathless. Her head jerks left to right, left to right, left to right before stopping abruptly. She looks at us, takes us in.

She lunges.

It’s easy for my father to overpower her. Because she’s nothing, she’s small, he pins her by the neck with one hand and, with the other, gropes around for something to defend himself with. She gnashes her teeth and claws at his arms so hard she breaks skin, makes him bleed, and the blood makes her wild. She twists her head toward it. My father finds a large piece of broken glass and raises it above him.

He thrusts it into her chest.

And then he does it again.

Again.

The woman doesn’t realize she’s supposed to be dying. It’s like she’s becoming more alive, stronger each time the glass is forced into her. She fights to free herself against my father’s waning grip and he stabs blindly until finally, desperately, he drives the glass into her left eye and the woman stops moving.

She’s stopped moving.

He stares at her body and sits there, drenched in someone else’s life, and he looks so calm, like he knew this was coming, like the way this morning started it was only ever going to end up like this. The room starts to spin.

“Sloane,” he says.

I find my way to my feet and back into the hall, knocking into the end table where we keep the phone. It clatters to the floor. The sound of the dial tone steadies me, rights the earth.

“Sloane—”

I push through the front door again and I keep moving until I reach the sidewalk. I’m just in time to see two cars meet in the middle of my street but not in time to get between them. The raw crunch of metal sends me reeling back and puts everything on pause for one brief, critical moment where I edge around the wreckage and try to focus on one thing that makes sense. This: Mr. Jenkins is spread-eagle on his lawn, in his housecoat. He’s twitching. Mrs. Jenkins is kneeling over him. She rips his shirt wide open. Heart attack, I think. Mr. Jenkins has a bad heart. She’s giving him CPR.