She Raised Her Heel Over My Wife Until The Ceiling Camera Started Blinking

My name is Nora Cole and my mother cleaned the west wing of the house I now live in. That sentence has been said to my face at four hundred-guest events by people holding my champagne, and it has never once been said unkindly enough that I could complain about it. On the night of the spring gala I went upstairs to fetch an auction ledger and came down eleven minutes later on a spine board with two cracked ribs and a hairline fracture in my cheekbone. There was a small white dome on the corridor ceiling that had been there for nine days. This is all of it, chapter by chapter, from a decanter on a console table to a morning when bail was denied.