Chương 2
Nora jumped off the counter.
“What the hell?”
“Stay out of it,” Victor snapped.
Helena said, “Then get up, Claire.”
I stared at her from the floor.
She was drinking coffee.
That detail lodged in me more deeply than the pain.
She took a sip while I was curled around her grandchild.
“Please,” I said.
I hated the word as soon as it left my mouth.
Victor raised the dowel again.
“Say you’re sorry.”
“For what?”
His eyes widened.
Even now, some stupid, stubborn piece of me had answered.
“For disrespecting my family.”
“I fell.”
“You always have an excuse.”
“Victor, she fell,” Nora said.
He swung again.
This time the dowel struck my upper arm because I twisted away.
Nora swore.
Raúl stood but made no move toward me.
Instead he pointed at his son.
“Don’t lose control.”
The hypocrisy of it almost made the room unreal.
Victor lowered the stick slightly.
I saw my phone on the tile beside the kitchen island.
I had left it there the night before while charging it.
The screen was facing upward.
Four feet away.
Maybe five.
Alex’s name was near the top of my recent messages because he had texted the previous evening asking whether I still wanted him to come by Saturday and fix the loose railing on the back steps.
My brother lived ten minutes away if every light was green.
Twelve or thirteen if they were not.
He had served eight years in the Marines and had been out for almost three.
Victor hated that fact about him.
Not because Alex ever threatened him.
Alex barely spoke to Victor.
But silence made Victor nervous when it came from men he could not intimidate.
I moved before I could think myself out of it.
My knee slid on the tile.
I lunged.
Victor shouted.
My fingertips caught the phone.
I pulled it against my chest and unlocked it with my thumb.
The screen blurred.
I hit Alex’s conversation.
I typed HELP.
Then PLEASE.
I pressed send.
Raúl yelled, “Take that from her.”
Victor crossed the space in two steps.
His hand closed around my wrist.
I tried to curl over the phone.
He twisted.
A sound came out of me that I did not recognize.
The phone fell.
Victor picked it up.
For a terrible second he simply looked at the screen.
Then his face emptied.
“You texted him.”
I said nothing.
“You texted Alex.”
Nora moved toward the doorway.
Victor caught the movement.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not staying for this.”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
Helena snapped, “Nora.”
Nora froze.
Victor threw my phone against the wall.
It struck above the light switch, shattered, and dropped behind the trash can.
He crouched beside me.
“You think your brother scares me?”
His voice had become quiet again.
That frightened me more than the stick.
I looked toward the broken phone.
Victor grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled my head backward.
My scalp burned.
“Answer me.”
“Let go.”
“You bring outsiders into my house, you deal with what happens.”
“It’s my house too.”
I had swallowed that sentence a hundred times.
I do not know why I chose that moment to finally say it.
Maybe fear had used up all the space where caution usually lived.
Victor stared at me.
Behind him, Helena slowly set down her coffee cup.
Raúl whispered his son’s name.
Nobody laughed now.
Victor pulled harder.
White sparks burst across my vision.
“My grandmother’s money bought this house,” I said through my teeth.
“Shut up.”
“You couldn’t afford the down payment.”
“Shut up.”
“You couldn’t even qualify without me.”
The next thing I felt was his hand at the back of my neck.
Then the cabinet.
Then the floor.
My hearing narrowed to a high metallic tone.
Someone was shouting.
Nora, maybe.
I could not make out the words.
I rolled instinctively onto my side and pressed both hands around my belly.
The baby moved.
One hard kick.
Then another.
I began sobbing with relief.
Victor’s shoes appeared near my face.
“You did this,” he said.
I tried to focus on the grout line between two tiles.
There was a dark speck trapped in it that I had scrubbed the previous afternoon without getting it out.
I wondered, absurdly, whether it was pepper.
My mind had apparently decided pepper was easier to understand than my husband.
Nora said, “Victor, stop.”
He told her to shut up.
She did not.
“I mean it.”
Something changed in her voice.
Victor turned.
I lifted my head enough to see her standing beside the table.
Her phone was still in her hand.
It was no longer aimed at me.
It was aimed at him.
Victor noticed.
“What are you doing?”
Nora swallowed.
“Nothing.”
“Give me the phone.”
“No.”
Helena stood so quickly her chair tipped backward.
“Nora, give your brother the phone.”
Nora backed away.
Raúl stepped between them, not to protect me, but to contain whatever evidence might exist on that device.
That was when I understood they were afraid.
Not sorry.
Not horrified.
Afraid.
The distinction mattered.
Victor released my hair and went after his sister.
Nora ran toward the living room.
Raúl followed.
Helena shouted at both of them.
For the first time that morning, nobody was watching me.
I dragged myself toward the kitchen door.
My right leg worked.
My left barely did.
Three feet.
Then four.
The baby shifted again beneath my ribs.
“I know,” I whispered.
I did not know what I meant.
I reached the doorway.
From the living room came Nora’s scream.
Then Victor cursed.
Then something heavy crashed.
I tried to stand using the wall.
My knee buckled.
I caught the edge of a small console table, knocking a basket of unopened mail onto the floor.
Envelopes scattered around me.
One slid beneath my hand.
My prenatal clinic’s logo was printed in blue across the corner.
May you like
I stared at it for half a second before pushing it away.
The front windows brightened suddenly.
