The sound of the Ming vase shattering against Richard’s skull was the loudest thing I had heard in ten years. It wasn’t just the sound of porcelain breaking; it was the sound of a dam bursting, the sound of my own sanity snapping back into place after a decade of suffocation.
My name is Sarah. I am thirty-two years old, though the woman reflected in the hallway mirror looked fifty. Gaunt, trembling, with eyes that had learned to look at the floor. But in that moment, as the police lights flashed red and blue through our living room window, I wasn’t looking at the floor. I was looking at my eight-year-old daughter, Emily, who was curled into a ball in the corner, her small hands shielding her head.
“She’s crazy! Look what she did to me!” Richard screamed, pressing a towel to his bleeding forehead. He was sitting on the velvet sofa, the picture of a wounded, respectable man. Richard was a senior partner at a prestigious law firm. He knew how to act. He knew how to spin a narrative. He was articulate, charming, and right now, he was the victim.
