At nine years old, Gray knows how to endure. She grows safety in small things—her grandmother’s cooking, her mother’s bracelets, the steady presence of her friend Grover. But no matter how practiced Gray is at endurance, no matter the small safeties she harvests from the gentleness around her, the threat of her father’s violence ever looms over her. When her father disappears, Gray dares to believe the danger has passed. It hasn’t. His return shatters what little remains: her grandmother is gone, and Gray and her mother have never been more vulnerable. Determined to protect them both, Gray makes a decision no child should ever have to make. Grover, carrying scars of his own, agrees to help. Together they set out to end the cycle of harm once and for all.