I blocked my mother’s number, and felt nothing but a light, clean relief, because the woman pressing Block was no longer the daughter those levers had been built to move.

Chapter 17 — The Penthouse

Three days later, I was discharged from the hospital.

A private car was waiting in the garage to take us home, not to a modest apartment, and certainly not to the suffocating shadow of my parents’ estate, but to Julian’s penthouse overlooking the lake.

The apartment was warm, and full of soft light and fresh white flowers, and at its center was a state-of-the-art nursery that Julian, it turned out, had spent the previous two months quietly preparing, without telling me, so that it would be ready when I came home.

There were no cameras.