Broken Hands, Cold Heart

Every time Maisie Pruitt comes close to signing her marriage license with Eric Henson, she loses her memory and wakes somewhere strange — a bar, a wilderness preserve, the top of a Ferris wheel. Five times she has been committed to a psychiatric hospital, and each time Eric and her brother Paul Pruitt brought her back. Then, outside her ward, she hears them: Eric has been dosing her, and the license has already been given to someone else.

She goes home and asks her parents to take her back. When she tells Eric she wants to break up, he only urges her to rest. Then he rushes out into a storm to a five-star hotel, where Rita Fox — the woman who took her place on stage after her fingers were crushed — stands at the centre of a banquet, her arm through Eric's, announcing a pregnancy.

Maisie confronts them all: Eric, Rita, her best friend Mabel James, her brother. Her brother admits they destroyed her piano career for Rita's sake. Her hands, once made for keys, now tremble. She ends it with Eric and turns to the two she trusted most.