Part 4
The question hit harder because it was the one she had been asking herself.
Why was she here?
She could have stayed away. She could have accepted silence as an answer. She could have told herself that the older woman’s message was not a threat, that the younger woman in burgundy was only angry because she cared, that none of this meant what it so obviously meant.
But there was a difference between leaving someone alone and allowing them to pretend you had never existed.
She looked down at her hand over her belly.
“I’m here because I’m not going to let either of you decide what my child’s life looks like without me,” she said.
The woman in burgundy’s nostrils flared.
The older woman’s voice dropped another degree. “Do not weaponize that child.”
The pregnant woman looked up so fast that loose strands of hair brushed her cheek.
“I’m protecting my child.”
“No,” the older woman said. “You are using your child to create urgency.”
Something inside the pregnant woman went still.
Not calm. Never calm. Just still, in the way a room becomes still after something breaks.
The woman in burgundy saw it too. She reached for the pregnant woman’s shoulder, perhaps to steady her, perhaps to stop her from turning away, perhaps because anger sometimes convinced people that touching was the same as having control.
The pregnant woman recoiled.
“Don’t.”
The woman in burgundy grabbed her upper arm.
“Listen to me.”
“Let go.”
“You are not walking out of here and calling him with some version of this.”
“I said let go.”
The older woman spoke from behind them. “There is no reason to make a scene.”
The woman in burgundy did not loosen her grip.
The pregnant woman’s fingers slipped on the rail.
Her body tilted. A sickening burst of helplessness went through her, fast and physical. She caught herself with one foot, then the other, but the hem of her dress caught beneath her heel. The woman in burgundy’s hand was still on her arm. The rail was behind her now, not beside her. The polished floor flashed gold beneath the chandelier.
“Stop,” the pregnant woman said.
The word came out louder than she expected.
The woman in burgundy’s face was inches from hers.
“You have no idea what you’re doing.”
“No,” the pregnant woman said, breathing hard. “You don’t.”
The younger woman’s other hand came up, not striking, not even moving fast, but catching the pregnant woman at the shoulder as she twisted away.
It was enough.
There was no tumble down the stairs. No long fall. No dramatic plunge into darkness.
Only the sudden loss of balance beside the first step.
The pregnant woman’s hand missed the rail. Her body turned sideways. One knee buckled beneath the cream fabric. Her hip struck the polished wood first, then her shoulder. The breath went out of her in a sharp, small sound. Her hand flew to her stomach before she could think.
For a moment, the chandelier above her became a blur of white fire.
Then the floor came back.
Hard under her cheek. Cold through the thin sleeve at her wrist. Smelling faintly of wax and old wood.
She curled around herself.
The baby moved once.
Then again.
A sob rose in her throat, but she swallowed it so hard it hurt.
The woman in burgundy stood over her.
The anger had vanished from her face. Not replaced by remorse, not yet. Replaced by something blanker. The first stunned second after a person realizes the body in front of them is no longer an argument but a consequence.
“I didn’t—” she began.
The older woman descended the last few steps.
Her heels touched the floor with the same measured sound as before.
The pregnant woman tasted metal.
She lifted a hand toward her mouth and saw the faint smear at the corner of her lip. It was small, barely there, but the sight of it made her breath hitch. Not because it hurt much. Because it made everything real in a way nothing else had.
The woman in burgundy took half a step back.
The older woman looked down at the pregnant woman without bending.
“You need to get up,” she said.
The pregnant woman stared at her.
The words did not make sense at first.
“You need to get up,” the older woman repeated, more quietly.
A laugh came out of the pregnant woman before she could stop it. It sounded wrong in the empty hall. It sounded like something breaking.
The woman in burgundy looked at the older woman. “She fell.”
The older woman’s eyes moved to her.
The younger woman’s mouth closed.
May you like
“She lost her balance,” the older woman said.
The pregnant woman pressed her palm harder against her abdomen. Her breathing came in short, careful pieces now. She could feel every heartbeat in her body. Her ear rested against the floor, and somewhere beneath the sounds of breathing and fabric and distant house quiet, there was the faintest vibration of the chandelier’s crystals settling overhead.
