With a strength fed on adrenaline, I jerked away from him and bumped against the wall. Pain, too much of it, too fast, came at me from various sources. My mouth watered, my eyes began to stream, and I felt a rising pressure of bile. "I'm going to throw up," I whispered.

With miraculous speed, a kidney-shaped plastic bowl was produced as if by sleight of hand, and I bent over it, moaning. Since I hadn't eaten dinner, there wasn't much to disgorge. I vomited painfully, finishing with a few dry heaves.

"I think she's got a concussion," I heard Gage tell the nurse. "She has a lump on the head, and slurred speech. And now nausea."

"We'll take good care of her, Mr. Travis." The nurse led me to a wheelchair. From that point on, there was nothing to do but surrender to the process. I was X-rayed, run through an MRI, checked for fractures and hematomas, then disinfected and bandaged and medicated. There were long periods of waiting between each procedure. It took most of the night.

As it turned out I had a middle rib fracture, but my jaw was only bruised, not broken. I had a slight concussion, but not enough to warrant a stay in the hospital. And I was dosed with enough Vicodin to make an elephant high.

I was too annoyed with Gage, and too exhausted, to say much of anything after I'd been checked out. I slept during the fifteen-minute ride to Gage's condo at 1800 Main, a Travis-owned building made of glass and steel. It was a mixed-use structure with multimillion-dollar condos at the top and offices and retail space at the base. The distinctive glass segmented-pyramid surmounting the building had earned 1800 Main a semi-iconic status in the city.

I had been inside 1800 Main a couple of times to eat at one of the downstairs restaurants, but I had never actually seen Gage's place.

He had always been intensely private.

We rode a swift elevator to the eighteenth floor. The condo door was open before we even made it to the end of the hallway. Liberty was standing there in a fuzzy peach-colored robe, her hair in a ponytail.

I wished she weren't there, my gorgeous, perfect sister-in-law who'd made all the right choices, the woman everybody in my family adored. She was one of the last people I would want to see me like this. I felt humiliated and troll-like as I lurched down the hallway toward her.

Liberty drew us both into the condo, which was ultramodern and starkly furnished, and closed the door. I saw her stand on her toes to kiss Gage. She turned to me.

"Hope you don' mind — " I began, and fell silent as she put her arms around me. She was so soft, smelling like scented powder and toothpaste, and her neck was warm and tender. I tried to pull back, but she didn't let go. It had been a long time since I'd been held this long by an adult woman, not since my mother. It was what I needed.

"I'm so glad you're here," she murmured. I felt myself relaxing, understanding there was going to be no judgment from Liberty, nothing but kindness.

She took me to the guest bedroom and helped me change into a nightshirt, and tucked me in as if I were no older than Carrington.

The room was pristine, decorated in shades of pale aqua and gray. "Sleep as long as you want," Liberty whispered, and closed the door.

I lay there dizzy and dazed. My cramped muscles released their tension, unraveling like braided cord. Somewhere in the condo a baby began to cry and was swiftly quieted. I heard Carrington's voice, asking where her purple sneakers were. She must have been getting ready for school. A few clanks of dishes and pans . . . breakfast being prepared. They were comforting sounds. Family sounds.

And I drifted gratefully to sleep, part of me wishing I would never wake up.

After you’ve been systematically abused, your judgment erodes to the point where it's nearly impossible to make decisions. Small decisions are as tough as big ones. Even choosing a breakfast cereal seems filled with peril. You are so scared about doing the wrong thing, being blamed and punished for it, you'd rather have someone else take the responsibility.

For me there was no relief in having left Nick. Whether or not I was still with him, I was buried in feelings of worthlessness. He had blamed me for causing the abuse, and his conviction had spread through me like a virus. Maybe I had caused it. Maybe I had deserved it.

Another side effect of having lived with Nick was that reality had acquired all the substance and stability of a jellyfish. I questioned myself and my reactions to everything. I didn't know what was true anymore. I couldn't tell if any of my feelings about anything were appropriate.

After sleeping about twenty-four hours, with Liberty checking on me occasionally, I finally got out of bed. I went to the bathroom and inspected my face in the mirror. I had a black eye, but the swelling had gone down. My jaw was still puffy and weird on one side, and I looked like I'd been in a car wreck. But I was hungry, which I thought was probably a good thing, and I was definitely feeling more human and less like roadkill.

As I shuffled into the main living area, groggy and hurting, I saw Gage sitting at a glass table.

Usually he was impeccably dressed, but at that moment he was wearing an old T-shirt and sweatpants, and his eyes were underpinned by dark circles.

"Wow," I said, going to sit by him, "you look terrible."

He didn't smile at my attempt at humor, just watched me with concern.

Liberty came in carrying a baby. "Here he is," she said cheerfully. My nephew, Matthew, was a chubby, adorable one-year-old with a gummy grin, big gray eyes, and a thatch of thick black hair.

"You gave the baby a Mohawk?" I asked as Liberty sat beside me with Matthew in her lap.