Page 109 of Shatter

"Your call." His voice is low. "You don't have to."

I know I don't.

I pick up the phone anyway.

Pierce taps the screen and dials, and I stand up and walk to the far end of the room, by the dead jukebox, with the phone pressed against my ear.

It rings twice.

"Pierce?" My mother's voice, crisp and clear as a bell. "Did she agree?"

She doesn't sound tired or weak.

She doesn't sound like a woman with tubes in her nose.

"Mom." It comes out of me cracked and small, eight years old again. "It's me."

Silence, three seconds of it, then four.

"Annika." She says it the way she used to say it when I tracked mud across the kitchen floor. "Where on earth have you been?"

My fingers tighten around the phone until the edges bite into my palm.

"Pierce said you were sick." I stare at the jukebox glass, at my own blurry reflection in it. "He said it's your heart. He showed me a picture."

"My heart is fine, darling." She sighs, a small, impatient breath. "I had a procedure. It was nothing. The point is, do you have any idea what you've done?"

I close my eyes.

"Your father could go to prison." Her voice sharpens. "Do you understand that? There are people from the government asking questions about the company's accounts, and things only you would know."

"Mom..." My voice goes thin.

"Nine months." She's not listening. "Nine months, Annika, and not one phone call. Not a postcard. Do you know what I told the Harringtons at the club? I told them you were at a retreat in Sedona. I had to lie to my friends. To Father Michael."

The jukebox chrome goes blurry.

I put a hand on it to hold myself up.

"And Desmond." Her voice softens, goes warm and syrupy, the voice she uses for maître d's and bishops. "Desmond has been very patient with you, Annika. More patient than most men would be. He still wants you. Do you understand how lucky you are?"

Bile scalds the back of my tongue.

"He cut me." It comes out of me in a whisper. "His man. He sent a man, Mom, and the man held me down in a parking lot and cut my arm open with a knife."

Silence again.

I wait for her to gasp, or to ask if I'm okay, if it hurt, if I'm safe now, where I am, if I need her.

"Well." She pauses. "You shouldn't have run."

Inside me, everything goes still, not broken, like a room after a door slams.

"Come home, Annika." Her voice is brisk now, businesslike. "Pierce will arrange everything. Your room is ready. We'll put this behind us, and nobody ever has to know."

I take the phone away from my ear and look at the little glowing screen, Mom across the top and the seconds ticking by underneath.

I press the red button.