He knew this because at every staff celebration, every holiday gathering, Maria had always, gently, refused even a single glass of wine.

And the second fact was simpler and more damning still: that no person on earth, trying to move an injured woman to safety, drags her by the wrists across a floor covered in shattered glass.

You do not haul a bleeding woman through the very thing that cut her, if your intention is to help her.

Vanessa’s story explained the scene.

It did not explain what Daniel was actually looking at.