At 3:07 a.m., my phone rang like an alarm from another life.
When I answered, my mother whispered, “Lena… help… me,” and then the line went dead.
I sat up in the dark, my heart hammering against my ribs. Snow slammed against my apartment window in Chicago, turning the city into a blur of white. My mother lived three hundred miles away in Cedar Hollow with my stepfather, Richard Hale—a man with polished shoes, polished lies, and a smile sharp enough to cut bone.
I called back. Nothing.
Again. Nothing.
On the thirteenth attempt, a nurse picked up from St. Agnes Hospital.
“Are you family?” she asked.
