In From the Cold Read Online Free Page A

the wall. Bad. Bad.
    But then it would be over. She’d see it in his face. The tension would leave his eyes. He’d mutter something like, “You shouldn’t push me like that,” then he’d sit on the sofa and turn on the television.
    Or, if he was really drunk, he’d just flop into bed and fall asleep. That was the best, those hours of silence. She could ice down her sore spots, put the house back together, and make sure Hazel was all right.
    Worse than the beating was what led up to it. On and on, he’d go on and on with his criticisms, accusing her of some crime or other. If she tried to defend herself, he’d twisther words around, so that everything she said somehow made it worse. If she tried to stay silent, hoping that would make it all go away, he would go after her for her silence.
    “You think you’re so pure,” he’d yell, right into her face. “You think you’re such a victim.”
    Hazel was supposed to stay in her room whenever she heard her father’s voice getting loud.
    “You go into your room, you close the door, and you keep it closed,” Rose told her. “Whatever is happening below is none of your business.”
    “What if I need to pee?” she asked one time.
    Rose gave her large, plastic ice-cream tubs to keep in her closet in case of such emergencies. She also kept a cookie tin full of snacks under her daughter’s bed, and bottles of water for Hazel to drink. Sometimes the yelling went on for a long time. She didn’t want her little girl to be hungry.
    That last night was an ordinary night.
    The same ranting. The same screaming. The same spitting. Rose remembered Hazel taking her plate of macaroni and cheese out of the dining room and up the stairs to her bedroom.
    Rose had heard of husbands like hers going after their children. Her own husband, thankfully, ignored Hazel. As long as Hazel was silent, to her father she was invisible.
    No, that’s not fair, Rose corrected herself. There were times when he was a good father, before the drinking got so bad. He’d read to her, play with her, and put her up on his shoulders when they walked down the street. He could be pleasant sometimes. Rose just had to watch for when he’d had enough, and get Hazel quietly — and safely — out of the way.
    Hazel had gone upstairs on that last night. Rose was listening hard to her husband, straining for clues that would tell her how to act. But his temper flared up quickly. She wasn’t ready for it.
    She couldn’t remember now what he said. All she remembered was the screaming, her husband’s face large and ugly right in front of her, his spit landing on the skin of her cheeks and forehead. She remembered how loud he was. And she remembered feeling very, very tired, as she tried to retreat into that secret part of her brain to wait out the storm.
    She remembered taking her plate into the kitchen. She had the ketchup bottle in her hand when he came at her. Did she squeeze the bottle of ketchup, or did it get squeezed when he hit her?
    She didn’t know. But somehow ketchup ended up squirting out all over her husband’s face.
    And then she did the worst thing she could do. She did the thing she knew absolutely that she must never do.
    She laughed.
    There were blows. There were kicks. There were slaps and punches.
    And then there was a knife in her hand.
    The knife went into her husband.
    And her husband fell to the floor.

Chapter Eight

    It’s only pain, Rose told herself. You can’t die from pain.
    The trip to the latrine was almost unbearable. She’d had to lean on Hazel all the way. Rose was determined not to scream. She’d given Hazel a bad enough day as it was.
    She remembered there were a few Tylenol left. Hazel got them for her, and got her a drink of water to swallow them with. The pills wouldn’t take away the pain in her back, but they would make it feel less severe. She got back on the bed, and Hazel covered her up again.
    “Get yourself something to eat, honey,” Rose told