The Strawberry Juice Wife

Summary

I drew my last breath exactly forty-eight hours after the earthquake hit, crushed beneath the ruins.

My three-year-old son, Ben, was tucked into a narrow pocket of air, surviving by licking the blood that seeped from my mangled arm.

Through the walkie-talkie, my ex-husband, Connor Vance, was shouting, his voice ragged with impatience:

“The entire city is mobilized for disaster relief, and you choose this exact moment to play a disappearing act? Do you have any sense of the bigger picture, Avery?”