“Please, arrest me. I’d rather go to jail than go back to that house…”

counter toward him. He didn’t reach for the spoon. He just stared blankly at the oily surface of the liquid, his narrow chest heaving with shallow, rapid, panicked breaths. He looked like a small bird that had flown headfirst into a plate-glass window.

Before I could even softly ask him what had driven him into the storm, the fragile tranquility of continue reading …