Page 110 of Shatter

Then I set the phone face down on top of the jukebox, very carefully, and I walk out.

I don't remember the hall.

I don't remember the back door or crossing the gravel past the shop.

When I come back to myself, I'm on the ground behind the shop in the long grass by the back fence, where nobody goes, with my back against the corrugated metal wall and my knees pulled up to my chest.

The metal is hot from the sun.

It burns through my T-shirt, and I don't move.

The photo's still in my hand.

I don't remember bringing it.

I'm crying so hard I can't breathe.

It comes up out of me in great, ugly, heaving sobs, bending me in half.

I press my forehead against my knees, shaking from my shoulders to my feet.

Snot runs down over my lip, and I don't try to stop it.

She didn't ask.

Nine months.

A knife.

She didn't ask if I was okay.

I've known it all my life.

I think some part of me has always known.

But there was a door I kept open, a tiny crack of light at the bottom of it, a little girl in a yellow raincoat who thought if she was good enough and small enough, her mother would look at her one day and see her.

The door slams shut.

Boots crunch on the gravel, and I don't look up.

They stop a few feet away.

For a long moment, nothing.

Then he sits down in the grass beside me.

Without a word or a touch, he leans back against the hot metal wall, a foot of space between us, his knees up and his arms resting on them.

His eyes stay on the pine trees past the fence.

He waits.

I cry until there's nothing left.

Until my eyes are swollen and my throat is raw.

The sobs go dry and shuddering, then fade to hiccups.