Page 132 of Joker

Like he’s got the shape of the threat in his hands and he’s already figuring out where to break it. That should scare me. Instead, it makes my knees feel weak in a way that has nothing to do with fear.

Joker’s jaw flexes once before he finally speaks. “How’d you get out?”

The question is quiet. Not casual. Not gentle either. Just direct. Practical.

Like now that he knows what Cal is, he wants the route mapped. Wants the weak points. Wants the exact line between where I was and where I am now so he can understand every place I could’ve been lost between them.

I look down at my hands. For a second I just stare at them, at the way my fingers are laced too tightly together in my lap, at the faint tremor I can’t quite stop.

Then I make myself answer. “I got lucky.”

Joker doesn’t say anything. I can feel the shape of his disagreement from across the room anyway.

So I try again. “I got desperate enough to do something stupid and lucky enough that it worked.”

That seems to satisfy him enough to let me keep going.

I take a breath and look up. “I was at the grocery store with Lexi.”

The memory comes back sharp and immediate.

Too fluorescent. Too bright. The stale air-conditioning. Lexi in the cart seat with Bunny tucked under her chin. My heart pounding so hard I could barely hear over it because Cal had been worse than usual for days and I hadn’t known how much longer I could keep pretending I could survive it.

“I saw Morgan.”

Joker’s brow furrows slightly. “Morgan?”

“One of the old ladies from Louisiana,” I explain. “She was there with her granddaughter. I hadn’t seen her in…” I shake my head. “I don’t even know. A long time.”

I can still remember the exact moment she looked up and recognized me.

The pause.

The way her whole face changed when she took in the shape of me. Not just that I was thinner. Or quieter. But that something was wrong.

“She knew better than to make a scene,” I say. “She just came over like it was nothing. Asked about Lexi. Asked how I was doing.” I let out a brittle little laugh. “I lied to her. Badly.”

Joker’s expression doesn’t shift, but I can feel how closely he’s following every word.

“She waited until I turned the cart to leave, then she slipped her burner phone into the basket under the groceries and told me if I needed help, I had one chance to use it right.”

My throat tightens at the memory.

At the simple, impossible gift of that tiny little phone tucked under a bag of apples and crackers like it was nothing.

Like it wasn’t the first real opening I’d had in years.

“I didn’t even know if I’d be able to keep it,” I admit. “Cal checked everything. My purse. The car. My phone. Sometimes even the diaper bag when Lexi was younger. He was…” I stop and swallow. “Obsessive.”

Joker’s eyes go colder somehow. Still, he doesn’t interrupt.

“I hid it inside the lining of one of Lexi’s old overnight bags,” I say. “One he never touched because he thought it was just full of extra clothes and toddler junk.”

That gets the smallest nod from him. Approval, maybe. Or just acknowledgment that I did what I had to.

“I waited two days before I used it,” I continue. “I was scared he’d somehow know. Or that he’d hear me. Or that if I actually called my dad and nothing came of it, I’d just make everything worse.”

That part still makes my stomach turn. How many times fear dressed itself up as strategy and kept me in place.