Something shattered in the kitchen, and Maren's eyes snapped open.

She lay still on her mattress for exactly one second, listening. Her father's voice - not words yet, just the low, grinding build of it - came through the thin wall between her bedroom and the rest of the house. She knew that sound. Every muscle in her body knew it the way they knew cold, the way they knew dark. Automatic. Without thought.

She was ten years old. She'd been knowing that sound since before she could name it.

Stay quiet. Don't move. Don't cry.

She pressed herself flat against the mattress, pulling the blanket to her chin, eyes fixed on her bedroom door. The crack of light at the bottom. The sound of her father's voice rising.

Then she heard her mother.

"Gerald, please-"

A second crash. Something wooden. The kitchen table, maybe, or a chair. Then Vivienne made a sound Maren had never heard before - short and sharp and cut off immediately. The sound of a person who had learned that making noise only made things worse.

Maren's hands fisted in the blanket.

She heard her mother's voice change. That careful, measured tone Vivienne used when Gerald was like this - soothing and very small, offering him an easy way out if he wanted to take it. Sometimes he took it. He'd go to the couch, turn on the television, and by morning he'd be in the kitchen drinking coffee like none of it had happened.

Tonight, he didn't take it.

The sound of his fist hitting something solid came through the wall. Then her mother cried out - a real cry, not held in at all - and something in Maren's chest broke open.

She started to cry.

She didn't mean to. She pressed both hands over her mouth, trying to stop the sound, but the sob came out anyway, wet and small and miserable. Just one. One tiny, helpless sound.

But Gerald heard it.

The voices in the kitchen stopped. One beat of complete silence.

Then his footsteps, crossing the floor fast, coming straight toward her door.

No no no-

The door slammed open.

He filled the frame - Gerald Voss, six feet of fury with bloodshot eyes and the whiskey smell rolling off him like heat. Maren scrambled backward until her shoulders hit the headboard. There was nowhere to go. There was never anywhere to go.

"I told you to go to sleep." His voice had gone quiet. That was always worse than the shouting. The quiet voice meant he was done being loud and had moved on to something else. "Didn't I tell you to go to sleep?"

"I'm sorry-"

He was across the room before she finished the word. He grabbed her arm and yanked her forward, and the slap caught the side of her face hard enough to snap her head back. The world went briefly white. She heard herself make a sound - not a word, just a sound - and then he hit her again, same spot, open-handed, and her ear started ringing.

"You never listen." He pulled her forward by the arm again, off balance. "Always crying, always making noise, always-"

Her knee hit the floor as she stumbled off the mattress. Then his foot connected with her stomach, and she folded. She couldn't breathe. She lay on the floor of her own bedroom and could not breathe, and he stood over her, still talking, but the ringing in her ear made the words blur together into something shapeless and very loud.

Then he grabbed a fistful of her hair and she was back on her feet, sort of - one arm braced against the wall - and then he swung her toward it, and her forehead hit the drywall with a crack she felt all the way down through her teeth.

Then there was a hot, wet feeling above her left eye.

She was still trying to breathe. It was hard to think past that.

"Gerald. Gerald, stop."

Vivienne's voice. Then Vivienne was there - stepping between them, her hands raised, her voice doing that careful, steady calm again. But her face had a darkening mark along her cheekbone and her lip was split, already swelling, and her eyes were not calm at all. Her eyes were terrified. She was just hiding it, the way she always hid it, underneath that steadiness she'd learned to hold like a shield.

"She's sleeping. She was already asleep." Vivienne's hands were on Gerald's shoulders, steering him, her body placed between him and Maren with a firmness that didn't match the gentleness of her voice. "She didn't mean to disturb you. Come on. Come with me."

Gerald stared at Maren over Vivienne's shoulder. There was something in his eyes that Maren had never been able to understand - something that looked at her and saw something she'd never done, something she couldn't fix or take back or apologize away.

Then Vivienne said something quiet in his ear, and his gaze slid away from Maren's face.

Vivienne looked at Maren over her shoulder. Just for a moment. Her eyes were dry and completely steady.

Bedroom. Lock the door.

Maren understood. She pressed herself along the wall and slipped out into the narrow hallway, moving fast, her legs shaking. She made it to her room, and Vivienne pressed the door shut from the outside with one hand while keeping Gerald turned away with the other, and Maren heard the lock click into place.

She stood in the dark.

Then Gerald roared - a sound that had no words in it anymore - and she heard him throw himself against the door. Once. Again. The wood shuddered in the frame. She heard her mother's voice on the other side, urgent and low, trying to get between him and the door again, the way she'd gotten between him and Maren.

Maren got back into bed.

She didn't know what else to do. She pulled the blanket over her head, over her ears, and she held herself perfectly still with her hands pressed flat against her stomach where it hurt. The blood from her forehead soaked slowly into the pillowcase. On the other side of the door, the sounds went on - her father's voice, something hitting the wall, her mother talking, always talking, never raising her voice, never giving up.

Maren cried until she had nothing left. Then she slept.