Chapter 1 - You Forgot What’s Under the Mat
Margaret kicked Eleanor’s crutch out from under her before the hospital discharge papers even hit the floor.
The silver crutch clattered across the hardwood.
Eleanor gasped, twisted her body instinctively, and dropped onto her right hip so her injured left leg would not slam against the ground. Her black immobilizer brace scraped the entryway tile. The medical boot on her foot hit the floor with a dull thud.
She stayed conscious.
She stayed alert.
But the pain stole her breath.
The front door was still open behind her. Late afternoon light spilled into the bright suburban entryway, and the American flag on the porch moved gently in the breeze, as if nothing violent had happened inside the house.
Eleanor’s long blonde hair hung loose and messy around her face. She wore a gray hospital T-shirt, gray sweatpants, a hospital wristband, and exhaustion so deep it made her hands shake.
Margaret stood over her in a patterned taupe silk robe, gray leggings, beige slippers, and a large brown designer handbag looped over one arm.
Her face was calm.
That was the worst part.
Not angry.
Not surprised.
Calm.
“My room now,” Margaret said. “Move.”
Eleanor looked up at her.
“What?”
Margaret nudged the second crutch farther away with the tip of her slipper.
“You heard me.”
Eleanor clutched her discharge papers in one hand.
“This is my house.”
At the attached garage doorway, Harrison stood in a brown-gray plaid shirt, blue jeans, and work boots, avoiding his wife’s eyes.
Eleanor looked at him.
“Harrison?”
His mouth tightened.
Then he said the sentence that told her everything.
“You’re sleeping in the garage.”
For a moment, Eleanor thought she had misheard him.
She had just come home from the hospital after three days under observation, a torn ligament, deep bruising, and a doctor warning her not to put weight on her injured leg.
She had expected pain.
She had expected an uncomfortable night.
She had not expected her husband to stand beside his mother and exile her to the garage like a broken appliance.
Margaret bent down, snatched Eleanor’s phone and medication bottle from the discharge bag, and dropped both into her handbag.
The zipper closed.
Eleanor’s stomach went cold.
“Harrison,” she whispered. “Don’t let her take my medicine.”
Margaret looked at him.
“Take her phone and medicine.”
Harrison flinched at the command, then moved.
Not toward his mother.
Toward Eleanor.
He grabbed her under both arms and dragged her backward across the hardwood, careful enough not to twist the braced leg but cruel enough not to stop when she cried out.
Eleanor’s discharge papers dragged across the floor.
The open garage doorway swallowed them in colder air.
Cardboard boxes lined one wall. A water heater hummed in the corner. A folded lawn chair leaned beside old paint cans. The concrete floor was cold even through Eleanor’s sweatpants.
In the far corner lay a large oil-stained rubber mat.
Harrison lowered her onto the concrete.
Margaret stood in the doorway, handbag clutched against her side.
“You should have stayed quiet at the hospital,” she said.
Eleanor looked up.
“What are you talking about?”
Margaret’s lips curled.
“You told the nurse too much.”
Harrison looked away.
Eleanor remembered the nurse.
A quiet woman with kind eyes who had asked, “Do you feel safe going home?”
Eleanor had not answered fast enough.
That pause had betrayed her.
Now she understood.
Margaret had been waiting.
Harrison pulled the steel garage door nearly shut.
Eleanor’s breath shook.
“You can’t lock me in here.”
Margaret turned the lock.
“We already did.”
The door clicked.
Darkness narrowed.
Before the last strip of light disappeared, Eleanor dragged herself toward the rubber mat and hooked two fingers beneath its corner.
The mat stuck to the concrete.
She pulled harder.
A narrow edge of hidden steel appeared underneath.
Harrison saw it.
His face changed.
Eleanor looked at him through the closing gap.
May you like
“You forgot what’s under the mat.”
The door slammed shut.
