I locked my wife in the pantry under the stairs

She answers softly, one hand never leaving her stomach.

Dad watches her with guilt in his face.

“She saved herself,” he says quietly to me. “She crawled through the panel. She found me because she heard me knocking.”

I look at him.

“You were knocking?”

“Every night for thirty years.”

The words empty the room.

Every thud in old pipes. Every sound under the continue reading …