The first thing I felt wasn't the pain. It was the cold. The white Carrara marble of the foyer was always kept at a precise sixty-eight degrees, a temperature Beatrice insisted was necessary …
I remember the way the air smelled that Tuesday—a thick, suffocating blend of wet sawdust, industrial-grade bleach, and the metallic tang of old, rusted cages. It was the smell of a place where hop…
