Chapter 2 - The Cracks in the Glass
At six o'clock on Monday morning, the temperature on the rooftop of the new downtown medical plaza was twelve degrees below freezing.
The wind blew down from the limestone ridges of the Black Hills like an open razor, slicing through my insulated Carhartt jacket and biting into my cheeks. My gloved hands gripped the twin vacuum suction cups secured to a ten-foot by six-foot sheet of double-paned architectural glass.
"Easy, Rebecca! Swing her port side two inches!" shouted Mack, my foreman, his voice muffled by his heavy wool balaclava. "Watch that corner! If you kiss that steel beam, this whole panel is toast!"
"I got it," I grunted through my teeth.
Every muscle in my back, shoulders, and core screamed as I counter-balanced the weight of the massive glass sheet. Suspended fifty feet above the concrete parking lot by a crane hoist, the panel caught the brutal morning wind like a sail. One wrong shift of weight, one momentary lapse in concentration, and three thousand dollars of structural glass would explode into ten thousand razor-sharp fragments.
I planted my steel-toed boots against the scaffolding, adjusted my leverage, and eased the panel into the aluminum retaining track with a dull, satisfying *thunk*.
"Clear!" Mack bellowed, locking the mechanical clamps. "Good set, Mercer! Goddamn, you've got ice in your veins today."
I detached my suction lifters and stepped back onto the safety platform, my breath coming in ragged white plumes. My hands were shaking, not from the cold, but from the bone-deep exhaustion of having slept less than four hours a night since Saturday.
"Take ten," Mack said, wiping frost from his eyebrows as he offered me a battered thermos of black coffee. "You look like you went twelve rounds with a snowplow, Bec. Everything okay at home? How was Sadie's birthday?"
I took the steaming plastic cup, letting the heat seep through my thick leather gloves. The urge to spill the whole humiliating, toxic mess onto Mack was overwhelming. Mack was sixty, a blunt, no-nonsense veteran who had hired me when every other commercial glass outfit in the state laughed at a five-foot-five woman applying for heavy installation. He was more of a father to me than Richard Mercer had ever been.
"Party went off the rails," I muttered, staring out over the frozen gray rooftops of Rapid City. "Family drama."
Mack snorted, leaning against the scaffolding railing. "Family. Can't shoot 'em, can't trade 'em in. What happened?"
"Vanessa happened," I said, taking a bitter sip of the coffee. "She deliberately smashed Sadie’s cake. So I threw her two-thousand-dollar Louis Vuitton bag into the fire pit."
Mack froze. The thermos paused halfway to his mouth. He blinked at me through his safety goggles, his craggy face completely blank for three long seconds.
Then, he threw his head back and let out a laugh so loud it echoed off the steel girders of the unfinished building.
"Holy shit, Mercer!" he wheezed, slapping his thigh. "You tossed the princess’s purse in the fire? Man, I would have paid a week's pay to see the look on her plastic face!"
"Travis is threatening to sue me," I said, the gravity of the situation pulling the fleeting amusement right out of the air. "He sent me a formal letter of intent this morning. Written by some strip-mall lawyer he plays golf with. They’re giving me ten business days to pay twenty-one hundred dollars, or they're filing a civil suit for property damage and 'intentional infliction of emotional distress.' And Vanessa filed a report with the sheriff's department."
Mack’s laughter died down, replaced by a dark, protective scowl. "A police report? For a purse?"
"Criminal mischief," I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "A deputy called me at seven last night. I had to sit in my kitchen while Sadie was doing her spelling homework and explain to a stranger that I burned a handbag because an adult woman crushed an eight-year-old's birthday cake. The deputy was sympathetic—said it sounded like a civil dispute and he wasn't going to arrest me—but Travis is pushing for charges. If it gets classified as grand damage, it’s a felony, Mack."
"They're trying to break you," Mack growled, spitting over the edge of the scaffolding. "They want you crawling back on your hands and knees, begging for their forgiveness so they can hold it over your head for the next twenty years."
"I don't have twenty-one hundred dollars," I whispered. The cold air made my eyes water, but I refused to let the tears fall. "I just paid Sadie's school tuition for the spring semester. My truck needs new brake pads. If I give them that money, I can't pay my mortgage next month."
"Don't give them a dime," Mack said firmly. "Let them sue. Any judge with half a brain will laugh them out of the courtroom."
"Judges care about property, Mack," I said quietly, the grim reality settling heavy in my gut. "The law doesn't give a damn about a homemade strawberry cake. The law cares about a two-thousand-dollar receipt."
My shift ended at three o'clock. By three-thirty, I was idling in the pickup line outside Meadow View Elementary School in my rusted 2011 Ford F-150.
The heater was blasting lukewarm air, rattling noisily behind the dashboard. I watched the heavy glass double doors of the school swing open as hundreds of children spilled out into the brisk afternoon, bundled in puffy winter coats and brightly colored backpacks.
Then I saw Sadie.
She was walking alone, her head down, her pink backpack slung over only one shoulder. Usually, Sadie skipped out of school, chattering with her two best friends, Maya and Chloe. Today, she was ten yards behind the other children, her hands shoved deep into her pockets.
A few yards to her left, Harper—Vanessa’s eleven-year-old daughter—was surrounded by a cluster of fifth-grade girls. Harper was gesturing animatedly, her face twisted into an exaggerated, dramatic expression. As Sadie walked past them, Harper laughed loudly, pointing a gloved finger at her. The other girls giggled and whispered behind their mittens.
Sadie flinched, dropped her head lower, and quickened her pace toward my truck.
My knuckles turned white against the steering wheel. A cold, feral rage flared up in my chest—hotter and far more dangerous than the impulsive anger that had made me throw the purse.
I reached across the seat and pushed the passenger door open just as Sadie reached the curb.
"Hop in, baby," I said, keeping my voice bright and steady.
Sadie climbed in, hauled her heavy backpack onto the floorboards, and pulled the door shut. She didn't look at me. She stared straight out the windshield, her small lower lip tucked tightly between her teeth.
I pulled out of the school queue, waiting until we were three blocks away before I turned down the radio.
"How was art class today?" I asked gently. "Did you finish that clay turtle?"
"Fine," she mumbled.
"Just fine?"
Sadie didn't answer. She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and began picking at a loose thread on the cuff.
"Sadie," I said, pulling the truck over to the curb near Canyon Lake Park. I put the truck in park, unbuckled my seatbelt, and turned to face her. "Look at me, sweetheart."
She turned her head slowly. Her eyes were rimmed in red, and her cheeks were splotched with angry pink patches.
"What did Harper say to you?" I asked.
A single tear spilled over Sadie’s lower lid, carving a clean path through the pale dust on her cheek.
"She told everybody you were a criminal," Sadie whispered, her voice breaking into a ragged sob. "She told all the girls at lunch that my mommy is going to jail because you're a violent psycho who burns things. She said... she said her mom has lawyers, and they're going to take all our money, and we're going to have to live in a cardboard box, and nobody is allowed to come to my house ever again because you might burn them."
The air left my lungs in a sharp, painful hiss.
I reached out and pulled Sadie across the center console, gathering her into my lap. She buried her face into my Carhartt jacket, sobbing so hard her little ribs shook against my chest.
"That is a lie," I whispered fiercely, pressing my lips against the crown of her head. "Do you hear me, Sadie? That is an absolute, vicious lie. Nobody is going to jail. Nobody is taking our home. You and I are going to be just fine."
"Why does Aunt Vanessa hate us?" Sadie wept into my collar. "What did we do to her, Mommy? Why did she break my cake?"
"You didn't do anything, baby. Not a single thing." I held her tighter, staring out the truck window at the frozen lake, where a flock of mallards huddle together against the biting wind. "Some people are like defective glass, Sadie. You look through them, and everything seems fine. But on the inside, they have hidden flaws. Tension lines. And when they see something pure and good, something they could never make themselves, the pressure builds up until they just... break. And they try to cut everyone around them with their sharp edges."
Sadie sniffled, wiping her nose with her sleeve. "Can you fix defective glass?"
"No," I said, thinking of my mother, my father, Travis, and Vanessa. "You can't fix it. You just have to clear the pieces out of the way before they hurt you."
When we got home, the reality of the war was waiting on our front porch.
Sitting squarely on my welcome mat was a heavy cardboard box, sealed aggressively with packing tape. Taped to the top of the box was an envelope with my name scribbled in Travis's bold, sloppy handwriting.
I carried the box inside, setting it on the kitchen island while Sadie went upstairs to wash her face and start her homework.
I tore open the envelope. Inside was a photocopy of an invoice from the Louis Vuitton boutique at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, dated eight months ago.
*Item: LV Monogram Canvas Speedy 30 Bandouliere.*
*Total: $2,145.00.*
Beneath the invoice was a handwritten note from my brother:
*Rebecca,*
*Here are the remains of Vanessa’s property. The attorney says you have seven days left to settle this outside of court. If you don't wire the $2,145 to the account number written below by 5:00 PM next Monday, we are filing the civil lawsuit, and Vanessa is submitting her victim impact statement to the State's Attorney. Mom and Dad agree with this. If you want to remain a part of this family, you will make this right. Otherwise, do not show up for Thanksgiving.*
*— Travis.*
I set the letter down.
My hands were perfectly steady now. The frantic anxiety that had plagued me for forty-eight hours had crystallized into something cold, heavy, and dangerous.
They were going to ruin me financially. They were poisoning my daughter's school life. They were threatening me with court, estrangement, and police intervention, all over a bag that had cost an arrogant woman a momentary embarrassment.
I grabbed a utility knife from my toolbox and sliced open the packing tape on the box.
Inside, resting on a bed of cheap plastic grocery bags, was the charred, water-logged corpse of the Louis Vuitton purse.
Travis had shoveled the whole mess out of my fire pit and boxed it up like a severed head. The stench of burned plastic immediately filled my kitchen.
I reached into the box and pulled the ruined bag out, laying it on a layer of newspaper on the island.
I looked at it closely for the first time.
I had never owned a designer handbag in my life. I spent my money on sturdy work boots, diamond-tipped glass-cutting wheels, and warm winter coats for Sadie. But as a glazier, my entire career was built on material analysis. I spent eight hours a day scrutinizing stress fractures, laminates, polyvinyl interlayers, and metallic coatings. I could tell the difference between high-grade float glass and cheap Chinese import acrylic from twenty paces.
I leaned closer to the charred bag.
The fire had burned through the outer brown canvas, peeling it back from the inner lining.
I frowned.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my high-intensity inspection flashlight, and clicked it on. A brilliant beam of white light illuminated the blistered edge of the purse.
Where the canvas had melted, it hadn't burned like organic cotton or treated natural linen coated in resin—which is how authentic Louis Vuitton coated canvas is manufactured.
It had melted into a thick, gooey, chemical blob of pure, cheap polyvinyl chloride. It smelled strongly of scorched petroleum and cheap industrial glue.
I pulled out a pair of needle-nose pliers and gently pried open the gold-toned metal ring that connected the burned handle to the body of the bag.
Authentic Louis Vuitton hardware is solid brass. Brass does not blister, peel, or turn silvery-gray under low-temperature wood-ash heat.
The gold coating on the metal ring had flaked off entirely, revealing a core of dull, porous, cast zinc alloy—the kind of cheap pot metal used in five-dollar keychains.
My heart gave a sudden, violent thud against my ribs.
I looked at the photocopy of the receipt Travis had taped to the box.
*Louis Vuitton — Mall of America.*
Then I looked back at the charred, bubbling piece of zinc and cheap toxic plastic sitting on my kitchen counter.
May you like
"Well, well, Vanessa," I whispered into the quiet, empty kitchen, a slow, predatory smile touching my lips for the first time in days. "What exactly did you have Travis pay two thousand dollars for?"
***
