Chapter 1 - THE CHAIR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLEThe skillet hit my four-year-old before I understood my sister had actually thrown it.
One second Emma was standing beside the breakfast table in my mother's house in Naperville, Illinois, clutching her stuffed giraffe.
The next, the dark skillet came spinning from Vanessa's hand.
It clipped the side of Emma's head.
She dropped.
“Emma!”
I was on the carpet before the skillet finished clattering across the hardwood near the kitchen doorway.
My daughter didn't answer me.
Her curly light-brown hair covered one side of her face. Her stuffed giraffe had landed beneath the coffee table.
For two seconds, maybe three, she was frighteningly still.
Then she made a small sound.
I pulled her against me.
“Baby. Emma, look at Mommy.”
Her eyelids fluttered.
Behind me, Vanessa said:
“All this over a chair? How dramatic.”
I turned.
My sister stood beside the kitchen island wearing a fitted burgundy blouse and black pants.
She wasn't rushing toward Emma.
She wasn't horrified.
She looked irritated.
The skillet had been on the stove less than a minute earlier.
No boiling oil.
No flames.
But it had been hot enough that Vanessa had used a dish towel to pick it up.
And she had thrown it at a four-year-old.
“Call 911.”
My mother, Diane, stood near the gray sofa.
“Rachel, don't start.”
I stared at her.
“Don't start?”
“She barely touched the pan.”
“She was unconscious!”
“She's crying now.”
As though that solved it.
Emma began sobbing against my chest.
My nine-year-old son, Ethan, sat frozen on the sofa with his tablet held against him.
He looked from Emma to Vanessa.
Then to Grandma Diane.
Something about his face frightened me almost as much as Emma's silence had.
He wasn't surprised.
He looked like he'd been waiting for something like this.
Vanessa moved toward us.
“Get her out of Lily's chair next time.”
I couldn't process the sentence.
My niece Lily was seven.
The chair in question was an ordinary wooden dining chair with a pale orthopedic cushion strapped to it.
Lily had supposedly injured her tailbone falling from playground equipment six weeks earlier.
Emma had climbed into it because it was beside the window.
That was all.
She sat in the wrong chair at breakfast.
Vanessa had snapped.
I tried to stand while keeping one arm around Emma.
Mom stepped directly into my path and pressed a hand against my shoulder.
“Rachel, you always did love an audience.”
I knocked her hand away.
“Move.”
Vanessa crouched until her face was level with mine.
“Relax. She'll remember the rules next time.”
Emma buried her face against my neck.
That sentence made Ethan move.
He lowered his tablet.
His eyes fixed on Vanessa.
She saw him.
Her expression changed.
“Ethan.”
He hugged the tablet tighter.
My mother's voice sharpened.
“What are you doing with that?”
Ethan stood.
Nobody moved toward him.
Not yet.
Vanessa's eyes dropped to the screen.
Her confidence disappeared.
I looked at my son.
“Ethan?”
He shook his head at me once.
Small.
Urgent.
Vanessa stepped backward.
“Give me the tablet.”
“No.”
It was the first word Ethan had spoken since the skillet hit his sister.
Vanessa started toward him.
I stood, putting myself between her and both my children.
“Don't touch him.”
Mom pointed at me.
“Go on, make a scene. You're so good at that.”
I pulled my phone from my jeans and called 911.
Vanessa swore.
Mom told me I was destroying the family.
Emma cried harder.
And Ethan whispered something only I heard.
“Mom.”
I looked at him.
“Lily told me this would happen.”
I stared at my son.
“What would happen?”
He glanced toward the staircase.
Lily wasn't in the room.
My niece had gone upstairs before breakfast after Vanessa yelled at her for spilling orange juice.
Ethan swallowed.
“She said Aunt Vanessa gets worse when Grandma helps her.”
The 911 operator answered.
I gave our address.
Then Ethan added:
“I have the messages.”
Vanessa heard him.
May you like
Her face drained.
And suddenly the skillet lying on my mother's floor wasn't the only thing I was afraid of.
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