Her blood soaked into my clothes.

I rode with her, whispering “I’m here, baby, I’m here,” while the sirens screamed.

But in my head, I was already planning.

At St. Catherine’s Hospital, they wheeled her straight into surgery.

I paced the waiting room, my boots leaving muddy prints on the linoleum.

Hours passed like centuries.

When Dr. Reed finally came out, his face was gray.

“Anna,” he said gently. “She’s in a deep coma. The skull trauma is severe. Her spleen ruptured. We stopped the internal bleeding, but…”

He paused.

“The brain damage is catastrophic. Her Glasgow Coma Scale is three. That’s the lowest it can be. Even if her body survives, the Emma you knew may not come back.”

I couldn’t speak.

“And the pregnancy,” he continued. “Her body is too weak. Carrying the baby in this state… it might kill her. We need to prepare you for the worst.”

“Prepare.”

That word bounced around my skull.

Prepare to say goodbye to my daughter and my unborn grandchild.

Prepare to bury half my world because of a golf club and a silver polish.

I walked into the ICU on legs that didn’t feel like mine.

Machines breathed for her.

Monitors beeped in a cold chorus.

Emma lay still, her body a roadmap of violence.

I pulled a chair close and held her hand.

It was cold.

Like the rain at the bus stop.

Like the wedding band still on her finger that I wanted to melt down and pour down her husband’s throat.

For an hour, I just sat there.

I thought about the Whitmore estate.

Twelve acres of rolling green lawn.

A sixteen-bedroom mansion with crystal chandeliers.

A wine cellar older than this country.

And in the master suite, Carter was probably curled under Egyptian cotton, sleeping off his rage.

Victoria was likely down in the parlor, evaluating the silver’s polish with smug satisfaction.

They were warm.

They were safe.

They believed their wealth was a fortress.

That no consequence could ever scale those walls.

They were resting.

While my daughter was dying.

I looked at Emma’s closed eyes.

I remembered her as a little girl.

She used to catch fireflies in a jar and beg me to let her keep them.

She never could understand why they stopped glowing after a while.

“You have to let them go, sweetheart,” I’d say.

“No,” she’d insist, “I’ll feed them sugar water. They just need love.”

That’s who she was.

She believed everything just needed a little love.

Including the Whitmores.

When she first brought Carter home, I saw the arrogance in his smile.

The way his mother looked at our modest house like it was a chicken coop.

But Emma was so in love.

She said they made her feel special.

What she never realized was that to them, she was just another pretty thing to own.

A decoration.

A young wife to produce heirs and host parties.

And when the decoration stopped being perfect, they destroyed it.

My daughter, who never hurt anyone.

Who once cried for a whole weekend when she accidentally stepped on a snail.

That same daughter was now in a coma because she missed a spot on a teapot.

I thought about all the times I’d bitten my tongue over the years.

The holidays when Carter “forgot” to invite me.

The charity galas where Emma was told to stand in the corner and look pretty.

The whispered remarks about her “common” background.

I let it all slide because she asked me to.

“Mom, please, I love him,” she’d say.

“They’re not so bad once you get to know them.”

Well, now I knew them.

And I knew exactly what they deserved.

The plastic arm of the hospital chair cracked under my grip.

I didn’t realize I’d been squeezing it.

I stood up.

I didn’t cry.

I didn’t beg.

I walked out of that hospital, got into my truck, and drove to the nearest gas station.

I filled a five-gallon canister with the highest-octane fuel they had.

The kind that burns so hot it’ll melt asphalt.

The young clerk behind the counter gave me a strange look.

“Grilling?” he asked.

“Something like that,” I said.

The drive to the Whitmore estate took forty minutes.

Forty minutes of silence, except for the slosh of gasoline in the back.

I parked a half-mile down the road, behind an old oak grove.

No one would see my truck.

The sun was sinking low.

The sky was bruised purple and orange, like Emma’s face.

I carried that canister through the woods, my boots sinking into soft earth.

The air smelled of pine and rain.

When I reached the edge of their property, I stopped.

The mansion rose against the darkening sky like a monument to greed.

Every window was lit golden.

Through one, I could see a chandelier dripping light.

Through another, the silhouette of someone walking.