My mother-in-law locked me inside a horse stall while pregnant because she said my pregnancy sickness made me no cleaner than an animal. My husband took my water, his brother removed my crutches, and his sister scattered food beyond my reach. Blood marked the straw beneath my injured leg. Then they opened the adjoining stall and something heavy moved inside.

Caleb stared at the water bottle lying just beyond his fingertips, his breath coming in short, rattling gasps that sounded like dry paper being torn in half.

"Ellie..." he wheezed, his fingers clawing uselessly at the dusty straw. "I can't... I can't move it..."

Evelyn rushed into the stall, falling onto her knees beside her favorite son, her neat net hair pulling loose from its pins. She laid her hands on his shoulder, her face twisted in absolute terror as she looked at the jagged distortion beneath his torn trousers.

"Caleb! Oh, God, Caleb!" she cried, her voice stripped of all its icy authority, reduced to a high, hysterical screech. "Thomas! Thomas, get back in here! Caleb's hurt! Call the doctor!"

Thomas came running back down the aisle, his face pale, his breath ragged. When he saw his brother lying in the blood-stained dirt, his mouth fell open, and he backed up two steps, slamming his shoulder against the tack room door frame.

"What happened?" Thomas stammered. "Did the horse—"

"Don't just stand there, you fool!" Evelyn screamed, turning her head to glaring at him with wild, bloodshot eyes. "Go to the truck! Get the first aid kit and call county emergency! Tell them Caleb's leg is shattered!"

"What about Eleanor?" Thomas blurted out, his eyes drifting toward me where I still sat pinned against the rear wall, holding my belly.

"Forget about her!" Evelyn roared, her fingers tightening on Caleb's collar as he let out another agonizing groan. "Can't you see your brother is bleeding to death?! Get the phone!"

Thomas turned and sprinted down the aisle toward the driveway, his heavy boots pounding against the gravel outside.

I watched them from my corner. The pain in my own leg had settled into a deep, rhythmic throbbing—a dull, hot iron driving into my calf with every beat of my heart—but my mind had suddenly become cold, crystalline, and absolutely clear.

The fog of fear that had paralyzed me for the past two hours was gone. In its place was a sharp, dangerous clarity.

I looked at the open stall door.

Twenty feet away, sitting on the stack of hay bales where Thomas had tossed them, were my aluminum crutches.

I didn't ask Evelyn for help. I didn't ask Caleb if he was okay.

I placed both of my palms flat against the wooden partition wall behind me, pushed my weight onto my left heel, and slowly, deliberately began to hoist my upper body off the floorboards.

Agony tore through my right calf—a white-hot blade of lightning that made my teeth grind together until my gums bled—but I didn't make a sound. I kept my mouth locked shut, holding my breath, forcing my shoulders up inch by agonizing inch until I was resting on my left knee, my broken right leg trailing behind me in the dirty straw.

Evelyn didn't even notice me moving. She was bent double over Caleb, holding his head in her lap, wiping his sweaty forehead with the corner of her clean denim apron.

"Hold on, baby," she whimpered, her voice cracking into a high, pathetic whine. "Tommy's getting the truck. We'll get you to the hospital in town. Just hold on for Momma..."

Caleb's eyes drifted toward me as I dragged my bad leg forward, moving on my left knee and my hands like a soldier crawling through a trench.

His eyes met mine.

There was no anger left in his face—only a raw, pathetic terror, the look of a child who had suddenly realized that the world outside his mother's shadow was vast, cruel, and completely indifferent to his pain.

"Ellie..." he rasped, his hand twitching in the dirt. "Don't... don't leave me in here..."

I didn't answer him.

I dragged myself another two feet forward, my fingers digging into the cedar floorboards, leaving a thick red smear behind my plaster cast as I moved toward the open gate.

I reached the doorway of Stall Four.

I pulled my good leg under my body, pressed my left hand against the iron hinge of the gate, and forced myself up into a standing position, balancing all my weight on my single healthy foot.

The barn swung wildly around me for five long seconds—the whitewashed walls, the dark rafters, the yellow hay bales spinning in a dark wheel—but I slammed my forearm against the stall frame and held on until the room came to a standstill.

I reached out with my left foot, took one hopping step into the center aisle, and reached for the stack of hay bales.

My fingers touched the cold, lightweight aluminum of my crutches.

I pulled them to my side, tucked the grey rubber pads securely under my armpits, and planted the rubber tips firmly onto the dusty concrete floor.

For the first time in three hours, I was standing on my own two feet.

I turned around slowly, balancing on the crutches, and looked back into Stall Four.

Evelyn was still on her knees, her apron soaked in her son's blood, looking up at me through the wooden rails.

When she saw me standing in the center of the aisle with my crutches, her face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred.

"You witch," she spat out, her voice dropping into a low, guttural hiss. "You caused this. You brought this curse into my house."

"I didn't open Stall Five, Evelyn," I said, my voice steady, ringing out through the quiet barn like a bell. "Caleb did. And you sat on the rail and watched him do it."

"Get back in here and help me lift him!" she demanded, reaching out her hand as if she could still command me from across the room. "He's your husband!"

I looked at Caleb lying in the filthy straw—the man who four hours ago had stood by while his mother locked me in a cage, the man who had taken my water and told me I was performing.