Chapter 1: The Bandage She Wouldn't Lift

"Promise me you won't get mad until you see the result." My 16-year-old came home with a bandage she wouldn't lift — On the third night my husband told her to take it off.

My daughter is sixteen.

She came through the kitchen door at 9:40 on a Tuesday with her left arm wrapped in cling film and gauze from the elbow down.

"Before anyone says anything," she said.

"Promise me you won't get mad until you see the result."

"Riley.

What did you do?"

"You have to wait three days.

It has to stay covered while it heals."

Tom stood up so fast his chair went over.

He wanted the name of the shop.

He wanted a receipt.

She gave him neither.

She'd paid for it herself — $340, everything she'd saved since she was fourteen, gone in one afternoon.

Then she went upstairs and shut her door.

You need to understand what those three days were like in our house.

My mother had been gone less than two weeks.

The funeral home invoice was still on the fridge under a lemon-shaped magnet, unpaid.

Tom's hours got cut in January.

I was sleeping four hours a night and spending every one of them doing sums in my head.

And my sixteen-year-old had just put something permanent on half her arm that she wouldn't name.

Day one, Tom wanted to call the police on the shop.

Day two, he said she wasn't leaving this house until September.

Day three, he stopped speaking to her at all.

I said the worst thing I have ever said to my child.

I said, "Do you have any idea what this family is going through right now?

Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?"

She didn't cry.

She hadn't cried at the funeral either.

Not once.

Tom said that was just Riley being Riley.

At breakfast, Max — he's four — asked why Riley had a bandage.

She told him, "Because I made a promise."

Thursday evening she came down to the living room and settled on the arm of the couch.

Tom muted the TV.

"Okay," she said.

"It's healed."

She laid her arm across the coffee table and started picking at the edge of the tape — "Look at it first.

Before you say anything.

Please."

---

What was under that bandage?

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And why did Riley say she made a promise?

Comment **"NEXT"** if you want Part 2 — it's in the comments.