My father smashed a brick into my face after my fiancé refused to leave me for my sister, and my mother just laughed. “Let’s see if he still loves you now.”

I didn’t scream. At the hospital, I asked them to preserve the evidence—never imagining that six witnesses and an old will would destroy them.

PART 1

“Let’s see if Wyatt still loves you with that face,” my mother said, and then she laughed. A cruel, delighted laugh I will never forget.

The brick hit me before I even saw my father’s arm move.

One second I was standing on the cracked sidewalk in front of my parents’ house in Columbus, wearing the light blue dress I’d bought just to announce our wedding date at the family dinner.

The next second, everything went white.

It wasn’t a loud sound. It was worse than loud. It was a dry, wet crunch, like something breaking deep inside my head. Sudden heat ran down my left eyebrow, over my cheek, onto my lips, and my legs simply stopped holding me.

Wyatt Campbell, my fiancé, caught me before my face hit the concrete steps.

“Sadie, look at me. Please don’t leave me. Sadie!”

I tried to open my left eye and saw nothing at all. Only darkness. With my right eye, I found my mother, Brenda, standing over by the old swing set.

She wasn’t frightened. She wasn’t running for help. She wasn’t calling an ambulance.

She was just standing there, laughing at me.