Chapter 1

The blood on the diagnosis was my five-year-old daughter Daisy Abbott's.

A minute ago she'd been leaning against me with a nosebleed, and when I wiped it with the back of my hand I smeared it across the page, one big red bloom spreading out, landing right over the second half of the words "acute lymphoblastic leukemia."

The doctor sat across from me and pushed up his glasses, the plastic arms worn pale. "You need to prepare yourself," he said. "The cure rate for this isn't low, but it requires a marrow transplant. We've already run the typing on immediate family. You're only a half-match with your daughter, which carries too much risk. Your ex-husband, Robert Dickerson, is a full match. Right now he's the only best option we have."

The disposable paper cup crumpled in my hand with a small snap, ice water dripping down through my fingers, cold like the shards of the beer bottle he'd smashed into my face five years ago. That time I got seven stitches in my forehead, and the scar is still hidden down at my hairline. Run a finger over it and you can still feel the raised ridge. That day I bled more than Daisy bled today, and he stood there and didn't even hand me a tissue, just cursed at me. "Serves you right. Who told you to stick your nose in."

The tissue the doctor passed me I wrung into a shredded ball in my hand, unable to force out even half a sentence. The pain from five years ago and the pain right now blurred together until my throat closed up, until even my breathing carried the smell of blood. I met Robert when we were both working. I was nineteen then, just come out of my rural town, tightening screws on the assembly line at the electronics factory, on my feet twelve hours a day, my feet swollen fat as dinner rolls. He was the line supervisor, and every day he brought me a warm breakfast sandwich. On rainy days he gave me the only umbrella and ran back getting soaked himself. At Christmas he spent fifty bucks on a silver bracelet for me. I know now it was only silver-plated, that it turned black after half a month, but back then I thought I'd struck gold. Against my parents' objections, I secretly went and registered a marriage with him, no wedding, just a nine-dollar certificate, and we lived in a rented room barely bigger than a closet, no heat in winter, the two of us crammed onto one narrow bed, and I still felt so lucky, like I'd found the person I could lean on for the rest of my life.

Looking back now, I was stupid past belief, couldn't even tell a person from a dog. That silver-plated bracelet I later threw into the reeking gutter below the building during a fight with him, and as the blackened bracelet sank I still naively thought I could throw all the misery away with it.