Chapter 1 - The Kitchen Floor
I had been on my feet for eleven hours at the hospital, and all I wanted was to put my keys down and hold my daughter.
Instead, I walked into my own kitchen and found my baby crying on the floor.
Lily was sitting in the middle of the tile with her legs kicked out, and her pink dress was covered in spaghetti sauce.
It was in her hair and smeared across her chin and drying in dark orange patches on the front of the dress she had picked out herself that morning.
My mother-in-law, Diane, was standing over her with her arms folded.
She wasn't reaching for her.
She wasn't kneeling down to pick her up.
She was just standing there, looking at her the way you look at a mess you didn't make.
Noah got there before I did.
He came tearing down the hallway so fast he almost slipped on the tile, and he planted himself between his grandmother and his little sister.
"Don't touch my sister!"
His voice cracked when he said it, but he didn't move.
He was seven years old and barely came up to Diane's waist, and he stood there anyway.
Diane turned her head slowly and looked at me.
"She needs discipline," she said.
That was what she said.
Not hello.
Not thank God you're home.
Not I don't know how this happened.
She needs discipline.
Noah started to cry.
He doesn't cry in front of people.
He's the kind of boy who waits until you leave the room.
But he was crying and pointing at his sister and his whole face was red.
"She never lets her eat!"
I don't remember crossing the kitchen.
I remember picking Lily up and feeling how light she was, lighter than she should have been in my arms, and then I turned to Diane and I said the words I never thought I would say to her.
"Get out of my house."
She blinked at me like I had spoken a foreign language.
"Amanda."
"Now.
Get your purse and get out."
She took her time about it.
She picked up her keys from the counter and straightened her cardigan and said something about how I would regret this in the morning.
I held the door open and didn't answer her.
When the lock clicked behind her, the house got very quiet.
I washed the sauce off Lily's face at the sink while she hiccupped against my shoulder.
Then I sat on the kitchen floor with both of my children, one on each side of me, and for a while none of us said anything at all.
I ordered pizza because I could not think of anything else to feed them, and Lily ate like she had never seen food before.
That should have told me something.
Half of it did.
I noticed.
I just didn't want to know what it meant yet.
Ray was in Denver on a job, so I put the kids to bed alone and sat in the dark living room going over the afternoon in my head.
The spaghetti sauce.
The dress.
The words.
I fell asleep on the couch around ten.
I don't know what time it was when I felt a hand on my arm.
Noah was standing over me in his pajamas, and he was shaking.
Not crying.
Shaking.
The way I shake when my blood sugar drops.
He was holding his phone out in front of him with both hands, like it was something that might bite him.
"Mom... you need to watch this."
