Chapter 9 — Without Me You Have Nothing

Flynn, meanwhile, grew confident, the way men like Flynn do in the silence after they believe they have won.

He called fourteen times over those days.

When the calls went unanswered, the messages began, and I read each one from my new room with a growing, cold amazement at how completely he had misjudged the situation and the woman.

Stop being dramatic, one said. Mom says you probably injured yourself worse falling, said another — an actual sentence, an actual attempt to build the lie into a shared story even now. Sign the documents and this ends. And then, the last one, the one that made me laugh out loud alone in a hospital bed with my leg in a brace: Without me, you have nothing.

Nothing.