7The whirr of the refrigerator motor yanked me awake at quarter to five. My body ached and my eyes were gritty with fatigue.
I gently opened the door to Bella’s bedroom. Thursday morning sun pushed through the miniblinds, striping the room with light and shadow. Bella was sitting up in the bed, her back against a pair of pillows, her eyes a dark band between alabaster streaks of forehead and cheekbone.
When I sank down beside her on the foam mattress, the slats in the platform bed creaked.
Overnight the bones in her face had grown more prominent, her eyes sunk deeper into their sockets. She looked like a trapped animal, a mother raccoon who’d spent the last few hours trying to chew off her foot, and still hadn’t freed herself from the hunter’s snare.
“I’ll give you till tomorrow night,
