“I promised you I wouldn’t leave you,” he whispered.

I had never seen him cry. Not when he lost his grandfather. Not when his first business failed. Seeing me like this had broken something in him.

Dr. Curtis explained that the bone around my left eye was fractured. They’d had to reconstruct the orbit and stitch a deep wound. Then she said the thing that frightened me.

“We believe you’ll get your vision back. But there’s still too much swelling.”

We believe meant they didn’t know.

An hour later, a police investigator named Chief Donald Briggs came in. He didn’t raise his voice. He just asked the direct question.