The sound Daniel Mercer heard when he opened his front door was not quite a scream.
It was worse.
It was the strangled, desperate sound of a child trying to scream and being unable to.
Daniel dropped his briefcase before he even realized he had let go of it. The leather case struck the hardwood floor with a hollow crack, spilling two folders and a silver pen across the entryway. He barely noticed. He was already running toward the living room.
“Sophie?”
No answer.
Then he heard the frightened thump of small heels against the floor.
Daniel rounded the doorway and stopped so abruptly that pain shot through his shoulder when he hit the frame.
For one impossible second, his mind refused to understand what his eyes were seeing.
His mother, Margaret Mercer, was down on the cream-colored rug.
Beneath her was Sophie.
His six-year-old daughter.
Margaret had one arm braced across Sophie’s upper body while her other hand was pressed over the little girl’s mouth. Sophie’s brown eyes were enormous with terror. Tears streamed toward her ears as she twisted beneath her grandmother.
Daniel did not think.
“Mom!”
Margaret looked up.
“Daniel, wait—”
“GET OFF HER!”
He crossed the room in two strides, seized Margaret by the arm and shoulder, and pulled her away from Sophie.
Margaret stumbled backward.
Her hip struck the edge of the rug, and she went down hard on one hand.
Daniel immediately dropped beside his daughter.
“Sophie. Sophie, look at me.”
The little girl scrambled upright and threw herself against him so fiercely that her forehead struck his chest.
“Daddy!”
“I’ve got you.”
“She wouldn’t let me—”
“I’ve got you.”
Her whole body shook.
Daniel wrapped both arms around her.
For several seconds, the only sound in the room was Sophie sobbing against his shirt.
Then Margaret spoke.
“You have no idea what you just interrupted.”
Daniel slowly turned his head.
His mother was rising from the rug.
At sixty-one, Margaret had always possessed the kind of composure Daniel associated with old photographs of women standing beside presidents. Even during his father’s funeral, she had worn her grief like a neatly buttoned coat.
Now her dark hair was disheveled.
Her pale blue blouse had come untucked.
And her face looked almost unrecognizable.
Not guilty.
Terrified.
Daniel rose with Sophie in his arms.
“What were you doing?”
Margaret looked at Sophie.
Sophie buried her face in Daniel’s neck.
“I was trying to stop her.”
“Stop her from what?”
Margaret hesitated.
Daniel’s voice dropped.
“She’s six years old.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Daniel—”
“You had your hand over my daughter’s mouth.”
Margaret flinched.
He had never spoken to her that way.
Not even as a teenager.
Margaret pointed suddenly toward the far side of the room.
“There.”
Daniel followed her finger.
A small black handbag rested beside a low wooden table.
It was an old-fashioned thing, made from smooth black leather with a rigid gold frame and a clasp shaped like two tiny leaves.
Daniel had seen it before.
His mother had carried it for years.
Then, about a decade earlier, it had disappeared.
“Look inside it,” Margaret said.
Sophie’s fingers tightened painfully around Daniel’s shirt.
“No.”
Daniel looked down.
Sophie’s face had gone white.
“No, Daddy.”
Margaret took a step forward.
Daniel immediately shifted Sophie behind him.
