“Let’s See If He Still Loves You With That Face”

“Let’s see if Wyatt still loves you with that face.”

My mother was laughing when she said it.

I was already on the ground beside my parents’ front steps, one hand pressed against the left side of my face. The brick my father had been holding lay on the sidewalk less than two feet from my blue heel. I could hear Wyatt shouting my name, but his voice seemed far away, as if he were standing at the other end of a tunnel.

A few seconds earlier, I had been holding a cream envelope with our wedding date inside.

Now there were dark drops across it.

Wyatt dropped beside me and caught my wrist before I pressed harder against my eye.

“Sadie, don’t touch it. Look at me. Can you see me?”

I tried. His face doubled, blurred, then disappeared on my left side.

“My eye.”

“I know. Ambulance is coming.”

My father, Gregory Davis, stood at the edge of the porch breathing hard. He was sixty-one, broad through the shoulders, and still looked like the man who had spent thirty years running a small contracting crew around Columbus. My mother, Brenda, stood behind him with one hand against the porch railing.

Neither came toward me.

My sister Melanie was near the door.

She was holding her phone.

That detail stayed with me.

Not the brick. Not even my mother’s laugh.

Melanie’s phone.

She had spent four months finding reasons to text my fiancé, show up near his office, appear at his gym, and tell relatives I was becoming “possessive.” Now I was on the sidewalk bleeding, and she was simply holding that phone against her chest.

Wyatt looked up at my father.

“Back away from her.”

Dad pointed at him.

“You did this.”

Wyatt stared at him.

“What?”

“You came into this family and turned my daughters against each other.”

“Greg, stop,” Mom said, but she wasn’t telling him to stop threatening Wyatt. She was looking toward the neighboring houses. “People are watching.”

That was when a man in work boots came running across the lawn.

I didn’t know him. Later I learned his name was Eric Dawson, an electrician who had arrived to repair an outdoor panel two houses down.

He stepped between Dad and us.

“Sir, stay where you are. I already called 911.”

Dad’s expression changed.

“This is a family matter.”

“Not anymore.”

Wyatt took off his jacket and folded it beneath my head. He kept one hand around mine while Eric stood between us and my father.

My mother finally came down one step.

For half a second, I thought she was coming to me.

Instead, she picked up the cream envelope that had fallen beside the brick.

She looked at the date printed inside.

October 17.

Our wedding date.

Then she folded the envelope in half and put it on the porch railing.

They Had Already Chosen My Replacement

I had spent most of my life making excuses for my family because excuses were easier than admitting what was happening.

Melanie was three years younger than me. When she was born, Dad told people he finally had a daughter who “looked like a Davis.” I didn’t understand what that meant when I was six. By sixteen, I understood perfectly.

Melanie got the bigger bedroom because she “needed space.” She got the newer car because she “had more activities.” If we argued, I was supposed to be mature because I was older. If she wanted something I had, Mom called sharing an act of love.

There was one thing they couldn’t give her.

Wyatt.

I met Wyatt Campbell when I was thirty-one. He owned a small construction-management company then, and for the first two years we dated, my parents treated him politely but without much interest.

Then he sold his company.

I never knew exactly how much he received, and I never asked. I knew it was enough that he could take time off, invest, and start thinking about another business without worrying about his mortgage.

My parents became fascinated with him almost overnight.

Sunday dinners went from once every few months to twice a month. Melanie suddenly attended all of them, even though she had spent years complaining that family dinners were boring.

Then she started appearing elsewhere.

Wyatt came home from the gym one morning and mentioned that Melanie had been there.

Two weeks later, she showed up at a coffee shop near his office.

Then she called him asking for “business advice.”

When I told Mom it was becoming uncomfortable, she sighed.

“Sadie, she likes talking to him. Why does everything have to become a competition with you?”

“I didn’t make it a competition.”

“Then stop acting threatened.”

Wyatt solved it more directly.

He blocked Melanie.

That should have ended it.

Instead, Dad called me the next evening.

“Tell Wyatt to unblock your sister.”

I was standing in my kitchen with a grocery bag against my hip.

“No.”

There was a pause.

Dad wasn’t used to hearing that from me.

“She’s family.”

“She’s my family. She isn’t entitled to my fiancé.”

He hung up.

I should have understood then that something had shifted.

Instead, I agreed to one more family dinner because Wyatt and I had finally chosen our wedding date, and some stubborn part of me wanted to believe a wedding could make us normal.

That was why I had carried the cream envelope to my parents’ house.

Dinner lasted twenty-three minutes before Dad put down his fork.

“Wyatt, have you ever seriously thought about whether Sadie is the right person for you?”

Wyatt stopped chewing.

I looked at Melanie.

She was staring at her plate.

Mom reached for her water.

“Gregory is only saying what everyone has been thinking.”

“Who’s everyone?” I asked.

Nobody answered.

Dad leaned toward Wyatt.

“Melanie understands the kind of life you’re going to have now. She’s social. She knows how to present herself. She’d be an asset to you.”

Wyatt pushed his chair back.

“We’re leaving.”

Melanie finally looked up.

“You won’t even think about it?”

I remember Wyatt’s expression more clearly than anything else from that dinner. He wasn’t angry yet.

He looked confused.

“Think about leaving the woman I’m marrying for her sister?”

Dad stood.

“You picked the wrong daughter.”

Wyatt took my hand.

“No. I didn’t.”

We walked outside.

Dad followed us.

So did Mom and Melanie.

The argument continued on the porch until Dad stepped toward Wyatt and told him he was making a mistake he would regret. I moved between them because I had seen that look on my father’s face before.

Then I saw the brick in his hand.

After that, I remembered white light.

Six People Saw What Happened

The emergency room smelled like disinfectant and burnt coffee.

A nurse cleaned the blood around my eyebrow while another doctor examined my eye. There were fractures around my cheekbone and orbital area, but the first scans suggested the eye itself had escaped the worst damage.

“We have good reason to be optimistic about your vision,” the doctor told me.

Wyatt was sitting beside the bed.

His shirt had my blood on the collar.

“Can I stay?”

The doctor nodded.

“As long as she wants you here.”

I tightened my fingers around Wyatt’s hand.

“Stay.”

A Columbus police detective named Marcus Hale came in about an hour later. He pulled a chair close enough that I didn’t have to turn my head.

He asked what happened.

I told him.

Then he asked whether my father had ever behaved violently toward me before.

I hesitated.

There hadn’t been another brick.

But there had been broken things.

When I was nine, my maternal grandfather had given me a small wooden cradle he had built by hand for my dolls. It had my initials carved beneath one rail.

Dad hated it.

I never understood why.

One afternoon after Grandpa had argued with him in our driveway, Dad carried the cradle into the garage and broke it apart with a hammer. Mom told me Grandpa had caused the problem by refusing to respect Dad.

Detective Hale wrote something down.

“Did your father have problems with your grandfather?”

“Apparently. I wasn’t told much.”

I explained the rest: Melanie, the sudden attention toward Wyatt after his company sale, the unwanted messages, the appearances at his gym and office.

Wyatt unlocked his phone and handed it to the detective.

“I kept some of the messages.”

Hale scrolled quietly.

Then he looked at me.

“Ms. Davis, there’s something I want you to know before your family starts contacting you.”