Chapter 1 - THE BAT IN MY FATHER’S HANDS
Robert’s baseball bat struck Lily’s lower leg before I reached the garage.
The sound was dull and heavy.
My daughter’s scream tore through the open doorway.
“Let my daughter go!”
Denise had both hands beneath Lily’s arms, dragging her backward across the concrete. Lily’s ballet slippers scraped uselessly against the floor. Her pink ribbon had twisted around one wrist.
Robert lifted the bat again.
I threw myself between them.
“Touch her again and I swear—”
Eleanor caught my shoulders and shoved me sideways.
Behind her, Aubrey sat in her wheelchair, sobbing so hard that her chest jerked beneath her denim jacket.
She pointed at Lily.
“If I end up in a wheelchair, she will too.”
Lily stopped fighting for one second.
“Aubrey, I’m sorry!”
Denise tightened her grip.
“Sorry didn’t make her walk.”
Eleanor blocked me again.
“Lily needs to understand what Aubrey lost.”
My own mother said it with the calm certainty of someone explaining a lesson.
Lily reached toward me.
“Mommy!”
I raised my phone.
The camera had already captured Robert holding the bat, Denise dragging Lily, and Eleanor preventing me from reaching her.
“You have made an irreparable mistake.”
Robert’s arms lowered.
Denise released Lily just enough for her to collapse onto one hip.
I placed the phone against my ear.
“911. What is your emergency?”
“My family is attacking my five-year-old daughter. Send police and an ambulance.”
Denise’s face changed.
“It was one hit.”
Robert dropped the bat.
The metal barrel rolled beneath his workbench.
Lily crawled toward me, unable to put weight on her right leg. I pulled her against my chest and used my cardigan to support the injured limb without straightening it.
“I’ve got you.”
“It hurts.”
“I know, baby.”
Eleanor reached for Aubrey’s wheelchair.
“We should leave.”
“No one leaves,” I said.
Robert stared toward the garage entrance, measuring the distance to his truck.
I turned my camera toward him.
“Try.”
Sirens sounded two streets away.
Aubrey covered her ears.
Denise crouched beside her daughter and whispered something I could not hear.
Aubrey shook her head violently.
Then she looked directly at Lily.
“They told me you did it,” she said.
Denise gripped the wheelchair handles.
“Aubrey, stop talking.”
Blue lights swept across the garage walls.
An officer entered with his weapon lowered but ready.
“Step away from the child.”
Denise backed from Lily.
Robert raised both hands.
Eleanor began crying as though she had arrived after the violence rather than helped create it.
Paramedics knelt beside us. One stabilized Lily’s leg while another cut away the lower half of her tights.
Dark swelling had already begun.
As they lifted her onto a stretcher, Lily clutched the ribbon against her chest.
“Don’t let them take it.”
“I won’t.”
A police officer picked up Robert’s bat with gloved hands.
Something had been taped around the handle.
A small paper label.
May you like
On it, in Eleanor’s handwriting, were four words:
SAME LEG AS AUBREY.
