Chapter 1 - THE BRICK
The brick struck me before I saw my father’s arm move.
One second, I stood on the cracked walkway outside the house where I had grown up, wearing the light blue dress I bought to announce our wedding date.
The next, the world turned white.
There was no dramatic crashing sound.
Only a dull impact that seemed to happen somewhere deep inside my skull.
Warmth ran from my left eyebrow, across my cheek, and over my lips.
My knees folded.
Wyatt caught me around the waist before my head hit the stone porch steps.
“Sadie. Look at me.”
His voice sounded distant.
“Stay with me.”
I tried to open my left eye.
Nothing.
With my right, I saw my mother standing beside the old porch swing.
Brenda Davis wore cream trousers, a pearl necklace, and the smile she used whenever someone else’s humiliation confirmed something she already believed.
She did not rush toward me.
She did not call for help.
She laughed.
“Let’s see if Wyatt still loves you with that face.”
My father stood three feet away.
Gregory Davis was sixty-two, broad through the shoulders, and still carried himself like the owner of every room he entered.
In his right hand was half a red brick.
The broken edge was dark with rainwater and something I refused to identify.
Wyatt lowered me carefully against the porch column.
“What have you done?”
Gregory stared directly at him.
“I warned you.”
Melanie stepped through the front door.
My younger sister wore a green designer dress and gold heels. Her manicure was fresh. Her expression held mild irritation, as though the blood on the walkway had inconvenienced dinner.
“I told you she wouldn’t move,” she said.
My mother sighed.
“We tried talking nicely.”
Wyatt rose.
“You’re all sick.”
Gregory lifted the brick toward Melanie.
“No. You’re engaged to the wrong daughter.”
The ringing inside my head grew louder.
Wyatt looked from my father to my sister.
“What?”
“Melanie should have been the one you chose,” Brenda said. “Sadie is selfish. She always has been.”
Melanie folded her arms.
“And you still chose her.”
Wyatt removed his phone.
Gregory kicked it from his hand.
The device shattered against the lowest porch step.
“No one is calling anybody.”
Wyatt stepped between my father and me.
Gregory raised the brick again.
“Move.”
“No.”
“You think money makes you untouchable?”
“This has nothing to do with money.”
Everything in Gregory’s face said otherwise.
Wyatt had sold his construction company eleven months earlier.
The amount had never been publicly confirmed, but local business papers estimated the deal at more than thirty million dollars.
Before the sale, my parents treated Wyatt as a polite inconvenience.
Afterward, they began inviting him to dinner twice a week.
Brenda praised his judgment.
Gregory discussed investment opportunities.
Melanie appeared wherever he went.
His gym.
His office.
The coffee shop near our apartment.
A charity auction he attended with me.
Wyatt rejected her every time.
She called the encounters coincidences.
My parents called her friendly.
I called them what they were.
A campaign.
Gregory lunged toward Wyatt.
They crashed into the rose bushes.
The brick fell, but Gregory reached for it again.
Neither Brenda nor Melanie tried to stop him.
They watched.
Then a utility truck slowed in front of the house.
A man in a reflective vest stepped from the driver’s side.
A younger worker climbed out behind him.
The older man saw me against the column and pulled out his phone.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
Gregory stood.
“Mind your business.”
The utility worker pointed directly at him.
“Take another step and I’ll tell the dispatcher you’re attacking me too.”
His apprentice began filming.
Gregory stopped.
Sirens sounded less than four minutes later.
Those minutes lasted longer than my entire childhood.
Wyatt returned to me and pressed a clean handkerchief near my eyebrow without touching the injured area.
“Can you see me?”
“With one eye.”
“Stay with me.”
“I’m here.”
Paramedics examined my airway, pupils, and neck.
One asked who struck me.
“My father.”
Gregory shouted from the lawn:
“She fell.”
The utility worker answered before I could.
“No, she didn’t.”
His apprentice raised the phone.
“I recorded the second half.”
Brenda stepped forward.
“This is a family misunderstanding.”
The paramedic looked at her.
“A brick is not a misunderstanding.”
As they placed me onto the stretcher, I looked toward the living-room window.
A curtain shifted.
An elderly man stood behind the glass.
Thin gray hair.
Dark jacket.
One trembling hand pressed against the pane.
I had never seen him before.
His mouth moved.
I could not hear the words.
Then Gregory noticed where I was looking.
His face changed.
He rushed toward the front door.
The curtain closed.
“Who is inside?” I asked.
No one answered.
Police stopped Gregory before he entered the house.
He insisted the elderly man was a confused family friend resting in the living room.
An officer went inside.
When he returned, he said the room was empty.
At the hospital, a nurse asked whether I wanted my face cleaned before photographs were taken.
“No.”
My voice sounded strange to me.
“Photograph everything first.”
Wyatt held my hand.
“You don’t need to think about evidence right now.”
“Yes, I do.”
Doctors preserved my dress, documented the injuries, and ordered imaging.
I had fractures around the left eye socket and cheekbone, a deep cut above my eyebrow, and swelling affecting my vision.
The surgeon could not yet promise that my sight would fully return.
A detective named Laura Bennett entered after midnight.
“We arrested your father for the assault,” she said. “Your mother and sister claim he acted after Mr. Campbell pushed him.”
“The brick came first.”
“Mr. Campbell says the same.”
“The utility workers saw it.”
“They saw part of it.”
“There was an old man inside the house.”
Detective Bennett opened her notebook.
“What old man?”
“He was behind the curtain.”
“Your parents say no one else was there.”
“He was trying to warn me.”
“Do you know his name?”
“No.”
Wyatt leaned closer.
“Sadie, what did you see?”
I closed my right eye and pictured the window.
The man’s jacket.
His hand.
The silver head of a walking cane near the curtain.
Then I remembered something else.
A leather folder tucked beneath his arm.
Stamped into the corner was a name I had not heard since my grandmother’s funeral.
SLOAN & MERCER, ESTATE COUNSEL.
I looked at Detective Bennett.
“The old man came to that house carrying legal documents.”
Before she could ask another question, my phone vibrated on the hospital table.
The message came from an unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
It showed the broken brick lying in my parents’ grass.
May you like
Beneath the image were six words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE ACCEPTED THE OTHER SISTER.
