In Chap­ter Forty-Four of “If These Wings Could Fly,” the emo­tion­al ten­sion esca­lates dur­ing a har­row­ing night. Leighton is abrupt­ly awak­ened by her mother’s dis­tressed cry, prompt­ing her to rush to her sib­lings, Cam­my and Juniper, who are ter­ri­fied and whis­per­ing that some­thing bad is hap­pen­ing to their moth­er. This urgency dri­ves Leighton to seek safe­ty for the girls in the armoire, instruct­ing them to stay hid­den and silent, despite her own anx­i­ety about leav­ing them alone in the dark­ness.

As Leighton descends the stairs, she halts at the bot­tom step, frozen by the sounds com­ing from the kitchen. She strains to lis­ten, hear­ing her moth­er’s des­per­ate plea for release, a moment that embod­ies the strain of famil­ial bonds under pres­sure. Visu­al­ly and emo­tion­al­ly sti­fled, she imag­ines her­self blend­ing into the house, hop­ing her invis­i­bil­i­ty will keep her moth­er safe while sup­press­ing her instinct to inter­vene.

Despite her reluc­tance, she remains alert to the unset­tling atmos­phere. A crack on the wall, sym­bol­iz­ing the frac­ture in their lives, grows as she con­tin­ues to push against it. As her moth­er’s strained pres­ence is revealed, it becomes evi­dent she has been cry­ing, despite not show­ing it direct­ly. This scene builds the ten­sion fur­ther as Leighton wit­ness­es a volatile con­fronta­tion; her moth­er attempts to man­age the man wield­ing a kitchen knife, their lives hang­ing in the bal­ance.

With a mix of courage and reck­less­ness, Leighton enters the kitchen, implor­ing her moth­er to leave with her, only to face vio­lent resis­tance. The atmos­phere shifts dra­mat­i­cal­ly as a phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion erupts, lead­ing to a cli­mac­tic moment where her moth­er shields her from the man’s wrath. Leighton, grap­pling with the hor­ror of the moment, flees back to the armoire, chok­ing back tears, feel­ing the weight of help­less­ness in the face of famil­ial vio­lence.

After a tense silence, the man final­ly departs, leav­ing a shat­tered calm in his wake. Leighton emerges, hope­ful yet shak­en, mark­ing a turn­ing point of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and for­ti­tude amidst their tur­moil.