TESSA.

“Did he sign it?”

Mom was at the sink with her back to me, like this was just another errand. I stood in the kitchen doorway with my knees still burning from the rug and Grant’s taste still in my throat.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s in the mail.”

It was not in the mail. It was locked in his desk.

Grant made me come back every evening that week to check if it went out.

Monday he did not even let me speak. The study door was shut. I knocked, dropped to my knees in the hall, and crawled in with nothing in my mouth this time because the...