The men who broke my door didn’t care that I was in a towel.
They wanted one hundred ninety-two thousand dollars by Friday or they were coming back for pieces of me that wouldn’t show up in a police report. My mother was in Arizona with a new husband who didn’t take my calls. My bank account had eighty-four dollars in it. The only number left in my phone that could move that kind of money belonged to the man I was not supposed to need.
Alexander Crowe.
My mother’s ex-husband. My stepfather for twenty-six months and then a ghost.
I called him from the hallway floor with the door hanging off one hinge and snow blowing in around my bare feet.
He picked up on the second ring.
“Nora.”
Not hello. Just my name, like he’d been waiting for it.
“I need help,” I said. My voice sounded small a
