What are you doing here?

Where are your shoes?”

And Maya Sterling, who had been holding herself together with both hands for four hours, came apart on her mother-in-law’s front porch.

She got inside.

She got into a kitchen chair.

Evelyn brought her a towel and made a small horrified noise at the blood on her waistband and got the first-aid box down from above the refrigerator, and cleaned it, and taped a pad over it with hands that were completely steady.

And Maya told her.