Chương 2
“She attacked me.”
Grace stared at her.
Nathan did not.
“With what?”
Victoria hesitated.
“That isn’t the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
“She came into my home without permission.”
Grace’s voice was rough.
“You told me to come.”
Victoria’s eyes snapped toward her.
“I did not.”
“You texted me.”
“That is a lie.”
Nathan looked between them.
“Where’s your phone?”
Grace glanced toward the hallway.
“My bag is in the kitchen.”
Victoria’s expression changed.
It was small, barely more than a tightening around her mouth, but Grace saw it.
Nathan saw Grace see it.
“Stay here,” he said.
“No.”
He looked at her.
Grace held Lily closer.
“I’m not staying in a room with her.”
Nathan glanced at Victoria.
For the first time since entering, he seemed to register the entire physical arrangement rather than pieces of it.
The stick lay near Victoria.
Grace stood unsteadily with a terrified child.
His briefcase remained by the open front doors.
Daylight spilled across the marble between them.
“All right,” he said.
He bent, picked up the hockey stick, and carried it toward the entryway.
Victoria followed him with her eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure you don’t pick it up again.”
“You’re treating me like some criminal.”
Nathan set the stick beyond the open doorway.
“I walked in while you were swinging it at them.”
“I stopped.”
“Because I came home.”
Victoria’s face lost color.
Grace looked away.
That sentence had landed harder than Nathan seemed to realize.
Lily lifted her head.
“Can we go to Nana’s?”
“Yes,” Grace said.
Nathan turned.
“Who’s Nana?”
Grace almost laughed.
The question was so ordinary that it hurt.
“My mother.”
“You live with your mother?”
“No.”
“Then why does she want to go there?”
“Because she feels safe there.”
Nathan’s mouth closed.
He looked at Lily again.
This time he did not move closer.
“Okay.”
Victoria stared at him.
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
“You just found out this woman has apparently spent four years hiding a child from you, and you’re standing there asking where the child feels safe?”
Nathan rubbed a hand across his mouth.
When he lowered it, he looked exhausted rather than angry.
“She is four years old, Victoria.”
“So?”
“So she’s terrified.”
“She isn’t even yours.”
Lily flinched at the sharpness in Victoria’s voice.
Nathan noticed.
“Stop.”
Victoria’s eyes widened.
“Nathan.”
“I said stop.”
Grace turned toward the kitchen.
“I’m getting my bag.”
“I’ll get it,” Nathan said.
“I know where it is.”
“You can barely move your right arm.”
“I can walk.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”
For a moment they looked at each other with the old irritation that had once belonged to another life.
Grace hated that some part of her recognized it.
She hated more that some part of him apparently did too.
Nathan exhaled.
“Fine.”
He walked beside her rather than touching her.
Lily watched him over Grace’s shoulder.
At the kitchen entrance, Grace stopped.
Her brown handbag lay on the island where she had left it less than twenty minutes earlier.
Beside it sat a glass of water Victoria had poured for her when Grace arrived.
The water was still cold enough to hold beads of condensation.
Grace stared at it.
Nathan followed her gaze.
“She invited you in?”
Grace nodded.
“She was calm at first.”
“What did she want?”
Grace glanced back toward the foyer.
Victoria remained where they had left her.
“Not here.”
Nathan’s expression hardened.
“Grace, she already knows whatever you’re afraid to say.”
“No.”
Grace picked up her bag with her left hand.
“She knows what she thinks she knows.”
Nathan looked at the bag.
“Your phone.”
Grace opened it.
Her wallet was there.
Lily’s emergency inhaler was there.
A packet of crackers, two crayons, a folded grocery receipt, and the little plastic rabbit Lily insisted on carrying everywhere were there.
Her phone was not.
Grace searched again.
Nathan watched her.
“It was in here.”
“Are you sure?”
She gave him a look.
“Right.”
He turned toward Victoria.
“Where is Grace’s phone?”
Victoria did not answer.
Nathan walked back into the foyer.
Grace followed more slowly.
“Nathan,” Victoria said, “you need to think about what she’s doing.”
“I’m thinking about her phone.”
“She came here to destroy us.”
Grace stopped.
There it was.
Not denial.
Not confusion.
Fear.
Nathan heard it too.
“What exactly did you think she was going to destroy?”
Victoria’s lips parted.
Nothing came out.
Lily shifted in Grace’s arms and whispered that her tummy hurt.
Grace kissed her hair.
“We’re leaving.”
Nathan looked at her.
“I’m taking you to urgent care.”
“No police.”
Victoria spoke immediately.
Everyone turned toward her.
She seemed to understand her mistake at the same moment they did.
Nathan’s face changed.
Grace felt a coldness spread beneath the pain in her shoulder.
Victoria shook her head.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Nathan said nothing.
“I meant Lily doesn’t need police coming in here and frightening her more.”
Grace stared at her.
“You weren’t worried about frightening her when you picked up the stick.”
Victoria’s composure finally broke.
“You had no right to bring her here.”
“You told me to bring her.”
“I told you to come alone.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Nathan lifted one hand.
“Enough.”
His voice was quiet.
Victoria stopped speaking.
Grace did too.
Nathan looked at Lily.
Then at Grace.
Then at the open doors and the hockey stick lying outside in the daylight.
“We leave first,” he said.
“We deal with the rest after Grace and Lily are safe.”
Victoria moved toward him.
“Nathan, if you walk out that door with her—”
He turned.
“What?”
Victoria stopped.
Her anger vanished so quickly that what remained beneath it was almost worse.
Fear.
Nathan waited.
Victoria looked at Grace, and Grace saw the calculation begin again.
Then Victoria said softly, “Ask her why she waited four years.”
Nathan’s eyes moved toward Grace.
May you like
The question reached the place where Grace had been wounded long before the hockey stick touched her.
She adjusted Lily against her chest and walked toward the door.
