It was the single most precious thing I owned.

And I want you to hold it in your mind as I tell the rest of this, because the distance between the homecoming I had spent four years dreaming and the one I actually walked into is the true measure of what my family did — not just to my wife, but to the whole future the two of us had been building, one wired paycheck at a time, in good faith, across an ocean of trust.

Chapter 2 — What I Saw in the Backyard

I set the suitcase down without a sound and looked through the gap in the fence, and what I saw stopped the breath in my chest.

There was a woman on her knees on the concrete of the backyard, gathering up the pieces of a broken plate with her bare hands.

Her head was shaved down to pale stubble.

Her shoulders were sharp under a thin, faded blouse, and her wrists, as she reached for the broken shards, were so thin I could have circled them with two fingers.

A bucket of gray, dirty water sat beside her feet.

It took me a moment — a long, terrible moment — to understand that I was looking at Phedra.

My wife.

The woman I had married, who used to laugh with her whole body, who I had been sending money home to care for every single month for four years.

“Pick those pieces up properly, Phedra.” My mother’s voice, Selina’s voice, floated out from inside the house, sharp and bored.

“If somebody cuts themselves on a piece you missed, I’m taking it out of your food.”

Out of your food. I did not move.