I will be honest about that, because I have gone over it a thousand times since — how I stood there and did not immediately tear the fence down.

Every cell in my body was screaming to cross that yard.

But something older than my rage held me still, and I will explain what it was, because it is the reason it all turned out the way it did.

For now it is enough to say that I stood behind that fence with my heart breaking, and I made myself watch, and I made myself listen, because I understood in some wordless way that I was seeing the truth of my life for the first time in four years, and that if I burst in now I would only ever get the version of it they wanted me to have.

Chapter 3 — Four Years of Burnt Metal