Booktree.ng_Forgotten-Witness

move your woman there. Maybe that would do the trick
because it seems mine doesn’t care if she bleeds to death right
here.”
The air in the room crackled. Josie seemed to neither hear
Stephen’s warning nor notice Reynolds’ anger. She had
planned for this moment since she was thirteen years old. The
script had changed over the years because a girl would react
differently than a woman, but the outcome was always
controlled.
How stupid.
How idiotic.
How predictably unpredictable.
This was a visceral moment, a blinding, gut-wrenching
explosion of emotion that rendered her helpless.
“Josie. Come on up,” Stephen cajoled.
Josie looked at the hand he tentatively put on her arm. She
heard him speaking but couldn’t make out the words. For a
second she thought it was Archer come to help her. It should
have been Archer. It wasn’t.
“That’s my mother,” she muttered.
“Ah,” was what he said, and then: “You can’t keep holding
to the door that way. See. Look. You’ve got hold of a shard of
glass. Got to hurt, don’t you think? It’s damn awful. You’re
making a mess of Mr. Reynolds’ nice floor.”
He had one hand on her shoulder as he put his other firmly
around her wrist. Josie seemed to understand. She looked at
her hand. She saw what he saw: the glass, the blood on the
floor, her pants, her arm, but she couldn’t connect it to pain.
“This wasn’t how it was supposed to be,” she said.
“I imagine not.”
He pried her fingers loose and the minute he did so the
blood flowed more freely. He could see two major gashes, one
across her palm and the other on her thumb. He pinched a