Chapter 2

The words came out almost as a shout, my whole body shaking.

Six months.

Six months I'd been with Duane, and in all that time he had never been anything but gentle, thoughtful.

Crossing the street, he always kept me on the inner side, always asked what I wanted before we ordered, always stood under an umbrella outside my office when it rained.

He said family meant everything to him. Every week he went home to see his parents, to look after his brother.

I used to think that made him a good son, a man with a sense of duty, someone I could count on.

Now I finally understood what kind of good son he was.

The kitchen door slammed open and his mother came charging out with a spatula in her hand.

"Who? Who's picking on my boy!"

She jabbed the spatula right up to my nose.

I opened my mouth to speak, but she turned and caught sight of Lester's pitiful, wronged little face, and that set her off on the spot.

She wheeled around, yanked open the security door at the entrance, and plopped herself down in the stairwell, kicking both feet against the neighbor's door across the way.

"Oh, oh, oh!"

She slapped her thigh and started wailing. "I can't go on living! My boy brought home a little tyrant!"

"Not even married in and already hitting people in this house! Picking on my youngest!"

That howl brought every door upstairs and down swinging open.

Neighbors poked their heads out to look.

"An old woman with a bad heart and high blood pressure," she gasped, thumping her chest and coughing twice, "and she's given me an attack!"

"This woman, this woman!" She pointed at me, and before she could finish, her whole body slumped sideways to the floor.

I turned to Duane, disbelieving.

"Your mother is standing here twisting the truth in front of all these people!"

Duane didn't even glance at me.

He bent down to help his mother up and called out to a middle-aged man in the crowd. "Uncle!"

"If we end up going to the hospital, or if the cops show up, you back me up. This woman was unreasonable and made my mother sick."

A chill spread across the back of my head.

Not one of the seven or eight people standing in that stairwell had a phone out to film. Not one of them said, "Call the police, pull the security footage."

They just stood there with their arms crossed, watching, like an audience at a play that had already been staged.

I stood in front of the James family's open security door, looking at those seven or eight faces in the stairwell.

They had crowded in close, but their eyes stayed fixed on me.

And then it hit me.

No wonder Duane's mother had the nerve to throw a fit with the door wide open.

Out here, every last one of them was on her side.