At midnight the line came through: a number I didn’t recognize, a voice that was low and disguised. “You made noise,” it said. “You pushed the fire into people’s faces. Now there’s nowhere to hide.”
“Who is this?” I demanded, though my throat felt like glass.
“You don’t want to know yet,” the voice said. “But be careful how you press a wound. Some cuts get bigger when you poke them.”
The call ended.
I sank to the floor and felt the pieces of my life clack and fall like glass.
We had asked for the truth with loud mouths and small courage. The truth had answered by dropping a heavy, ugly thing into our laps: my father’s name on paper. The town’s fragile moral architecture teetered.
And out in the dark, Dominic—who claimed to have gone into the dark for us—was either a sacrificial soldi
