Chương 2
She felt that way now.
The brass key looked ridiculously small in her palm.
“Rachel,” Daniel said. “Listen to me.”
“No.”
“I can explain.”
“No.”
“Please don’t try to stand.”
“Open your door.”
He looked at Margaret.
That was the moment.
Not the key.
Not the lock.
Not even the blood.
The glance.
A husband watching his eight-month-pregnant wife bleed onto the floor and still checking with his mother before deciding what he was allowed to do.
Something inside Rachel changed shape.
The dispatcher spoke again.
“Rachel, I need to tell you something because you may hear officers asking about it when they arrive.”
Rachel inserted the key into the interior lock.
Her hand shook so badly she missed the keyway the first time.
“What?”
“We received another call roughly ten minutes before yours.”
The key entered.
Rachel stopped turning it.
The dispatcher continued.
“The caller said a pregnant bride at this address might begin bleeding during the reception.”
Rachel’s fingers went numb.
Outside the glass, Daniel lowered his eyes.
Margaret stepped backward.
Rachel looked from one to the other.
The string quartet downstairs reached the end of whatever it had been playing. Applause rose faintly from the lawn.
Some of their guests apparently still had no idea anything was wrong.
A woman laughed.
Rachel looked at Daniel.
“How did they know before I did?”
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Margaret moved another step toward the staircase.
Rachel turned the key.
The lock gave with a dull mechanical click.
Daniel pushed the door inward at the same moment Rachel pulled.
The shattered pane rattled.
He reached for her.
Rachel slapped his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Rachel, you’re bleeding.”
“I noticed.”
“We need to get you downstairs.”
She stared at him.
“You just kept me from going downstairs.”
“That isn’t what happened.”
“Daniel.”
His face changed again.
He had always been a terrible liar when she said his name quietly.
He could survive accusation. Anger made him defensive. Raised voices gave him something to push against.
Quietness stripped him.
Margaret stepped forward.
“Rachel, this is not the time.”
Rachel turned her head.
Margaret had used exactly the same tone four months earlier when Rachel asked why the wedding florist had suddenly changed the flowers Rachel had chosen.
This is not the time.
When Daniel missed a prenatal appointment because Margaret summoned him to a board dinner.
This is not the time.
When Rachel discovered that Margaret had moved the rehearsal dinner from a small restaurant to the ballroom without asking.
This is not the time.
It had become the family’s most useful sentence.
It meant that the thing Rachel wanted could be delayed until her desire became embarrassing enough that she stopped asking.
A wave of dizziness moved through her.
She caught the doorframe.
Daniel stepped toward her again.
She pointed the brass key at him.
“If you touch me before the paramedics get here, I will scream until everyone downstairs hears me.”
His jaw tightened.
“Fine.”
Margaret said, “You’re being irrational.”
Rachel looked at the blood on her dress.
Something almost like amusement moved through her.
“Interesting choice of word.”
Sirens became audible beyond the house.
Margaret’s head snapped toward the front lawn.
That was the first time Rachel saw real fear on her face.
Not concern.
Fear.
Rachel understood then that whatever had happened in this room had not gone according to Margaret’s plan.
The realization should have comforted her.
It did not.
Two paramedics reached the corridor first, accompanied by a county sheriff’s deputy and one of the estate security guards. The security guard, Evan, had been employed by Margaret for eleven years and looked sick when he saw Rachel.
The taller paramedic dropped to his knees beside her.
“Rachel? I’m Mark. This is Allison. We’re going to take care of you.”
Rachel nodded.
“What happened?”
“She’s thirty-four weeks,” Daniel said.
Rachel looked at him.
“I asked her.”
Daniel stopped.
Mark glanced once between them, then returned his attention to Rachel.
“How long have you been bleeding?”
“I don’t know. Maybe fifteen minutes. Maybe longer.”
“Any complications during the pregnancy?”
Rachel hesitated.
Daniel answered again.
“She had a bleed three weeks ago.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Barely.
Rachel saw that too.
Mark’s expression sharpened.
“Rachel?”
“Yes.”
“You were evaluated?”
“Yes.”
“What did they tell you?”
“That if it happened again, I was supposed to go straight to the hospital.”
Mark nodded once.
No judgment.
That somehow made it worse.
Rachel looked at Daniel.
“You knew that.”
His face had gone gray.
“Yes.”
The deputy stepped toward the damaged door.
“Who locked this?”
Nobody answered.
The paramedic Allison cut carefully through part of Rachel’s dress to position equipment against her abdomen. Rachel made a small sound when the scissors touched the lace.
Not because it hurt.
Because she had spent six months choosing that dress.
She had gone to three fittings. Her friend Leah had cried the first time she saw it. Rachel’s mother, dead for seven years, would have hated the sleeves and loved the train. Rachel had thought about that while standing in front of a mirror in Manhattan with a seamstress pinning the waist around a belly that had grown faster than any of them expected.
Now the lace was being cut apart on Margaret Monroe’s bathroom floor.
A ridiculous thing to care about.
Rachel cared anyway.
“Baby’s heart rate is faster than I’d like,” Allison said.
Mark’s attention shifted.
“How are her pressures?”
Allison answered with numbers Rachel immediately forgot.
“We’re moving.”
Daniel followed as they lifted Rachel onto the stretcher.
She grabbed Mark’s sleeve.
“He doesn’t come.”
Daniel stopped.
“Rachel.”
“No.”
“I’m your husband.”
The words struck the corridor oddly.
Husband.
They had been married for four hours.
Rachel looked at his boutonnière.
The white rose was crushed.
She wondered when that had happened.
“You can explain to the deputy why you had a key.”
Daniel’s throat moved.
Margaret said, “This is absurd.”
May you like
The deputy turned toward her.
“Ma’am, I need you to stay here.”
