Chapter 3 — The Mistake

He moved fast.

One moment I was standing beside the stove; the next, his palm struck my upper back, hard, and I was falling.

I will not describe what happened next in detail, because it does not need describing, and because the people who did it do not deserve the theater of it.

It is enough to say that there was an enormous pot of soup on that stove — the one Sylvia had insisted on for Sunday dinner — and that I went into it, and that I came out of it burned, and that as I collapsed onto the tile the only thought in my mind was not the pain, though the pain was enormous.

It was my daughter.