For four months, I had known her as a forgettable woman in gray sweaters and black pants, someone who cleaned rooms quietly and disappeared before anyone noticed her. Standing in a fighter’s stance now, she suddenly looked like a secret that had been buried badly.
“I’m teaching Grace,” she said.
“To get hurt?”
“How not to.”
“Go upstairs, Grace.”
“No.”
That one word hit harder than the batons.
My jaw tightened. “Grace.”
“You don’t get to pull me out of every room where I finally feel like I’m part of my own life.”
Anger rose inside me, but underneath it was something worse.
Fear.
“You’re twelve. You’re blind. You’re my daughter, and you don’t decide what danger means in this family.”
Grace gripped the baton tighter.
“You decide everything. Which hallway I use. Which car takes me somewhere. Who talks to me. Which windows stay locked. You call it protection, Dad, but it feels like being buried alive in a beautiful house.”
The cellar went silent.
I turned to Evelyn.
“You put those words in her mouth?”
“No,” she said calmly. “They were already there. I just listened.”
My temper hardened instantly.
“You’re fired.”
Grace flinched.
Evelyn didn’t.
“No, Mr. Caruso,” she replied. “I’m not.”