My 5-year-old daughter called me at work, crying. “Mommy, Daddy’s girlfriend h//it me with a hockey stick.” Then she whispered, “If I cry, she’ll h//urt me again.” I could hear a woman yelling in the background. I was 27 minutes away. I called my sister, a former MMA fighter. “I’m closer,” she said. “I’m going in now.” When she forced the door open…
Chapter 1: The Twenty-Seven Minute Chasm
My name is Lena Mercer , and the most catastrophic phone call of my thirty-three years of existence did not come from a doctor, a police officer, or a frantic neighbor. It came from my five-year-old daughter, Ava , while I sat bathed in the soul-sucking hum of fluorescent office lights, blindly stamping approval on a corporate insurance claim I would forget before lunchtime.
