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Behind me, a chair scrapes across the kitchen floor. The back door swings open, and I can't even say his name.

6

KNOX

She's gripping my porch rail hard enough to make the old wood creak, and she isn't breathing. I'm one step out my back door with a cold cup of coffee still in my hand. The light over the steps shows me the back of her. Her shoulders are jammed up around her ears. I can't hear a breath going in or out of her.

I saw her coming. I was at the kitchen table with my chair turned to the window over the sink when her door flew open and banged off the wall.

She came across the yard barefoot in my flannel with one arm clamped over her ribs, and she never once looked at my window. Both her hands were empty. She'd left her knife behind. The only other time she's come to my door without it, she came to my bed.

I set the cup down on the boards and keep my hands empty.

"Delilah."

Nothing. Her left knuckles have gone white on the rail. Her right hand is clamped there inside the purple vet wrap Nell put on it. The wood groans again.

"You're on my porch. You're at Devil's Acre. There's nobody out here but me."

She doesn't turn her head. She's staring past the guest house at the dark line of cedar along the back pasture, as if she expects something to step out of it.

"Sit down for me. Right there on the top step."

She doesn't sit. Her chest jerks once as her body tries to drag in air, and her throat locks it out.

I've had the wind stomped out of me by a bull. I've lain in the arena dirt with my mouth open like a landed catfish while the bullfighters, the men whose job is to get a bull off a downed rider, ran in and waved it off me. The air always came back on its own.

This isn't that. Near as I can tell, it's panic. She's trying to pull air in, and her own throat won't let it through.

I've seen it in my ring, too. A kid gets choked out against the ropes, comes to, and can't remember how to pull air through a throat that just had a forearm across it. Talking sense to him doesn't help. Rubbing his back doesn't either.

"Delilah, look at me."

She can't. I don't think she hears me.

I come down off the porch and step onto the grass in front of her, so the rail is between us and she can see me without turning her head. Standing in the yard, I'm lower than she is. Her mouth is open, and her lips have gone pale.

I don't reach for her. The first night, I raised my hand to a light switch, and she flinched like I'd swung on her. I'm not putting a hand anywhere near her now.

She doesn't have long before her knees give out. If my voice doesn't reach her in the next minute, I'm calling Nell and putting Delilah in my truck.

The voice comes out of me before I've decided anything. It's low and even, and I never have to raise it.

It's the voice I use when two men won't quit swinging after the bell. It's the voice I use at the Farrier, a members' house in San Antonio. I use it in a private room there, after a woman has written down her limits, signed her name under them, and handed me the paper.

"Delilah. Eyes on me. Breathe when I tell you."

Her eyes drop off the tree line and land on my face. Her whole body goes still and quiet. Her shoulders stay up. Her mouth closes. She's waiting for my next order.

"In."

She sucks a breath in through her nose. It's short and ragged. It catches halfway down, but it's air.

"Out. Slow."

The breath leaves her in a long, shaking rush. Her fingers loosen on the rail.

"Again. In through your nose." I keep my eyes on hers. "Out slow."