Part 5
“She didn’t lose her balance,” the woman in burgundy said.
The older woman turned her head.
The younger woman looked away.
The pregnant woman watched them through the blur in her eyes. It was strange how quickly power shifted when no one wanted to name what had happened. A moment ago, the woman in burgundy had been leaning close, full of certainty. Now she stood with her arms at her sides, fingers curled, watching the floor near the pregnant woman’s shoulder as though the floor might explain it.
The older woman’s face stayed composed.
That was the worst part.
Not the grip. Not the fall. Not the burn in her hip or the blood at the corner of her mouth.
The composure.
The fact that the older woman could look down at a pregnant woman on the floor and preserve herself so completely.
The pregnant woman tried to move.
Pain pulled across her side, hot and immediate. She stopped, breathing through it. Her dress had twisted around her legs. One sleeve had slipped down her wrist, exposing pale skin against the dark wood.
Near her hand, half beneath the edge of her skirt, lay her phone.
She had not noticed it leave her body.
The screen was dark. The case was black, unremarkable, its corner resting against a line in the wood. It was close enough that she could reach it if she stretched.
The older woman noticed where she was looking.
“Don’t,” she said.
The pregnant woman’s eyes lifted.
The word was quiet. Almost gentle.
That made it worse.
The woman in burgundy looked at the phone too. “She needs to call someone.”
The older woman did not look at her. “She needs to calm down.”
“She’s on the floor.”
“Yes.”
“And she’s pregnant.”
“Yes.”
The older woman finally turned her head.
The younger woman’s lips parted, but no words came.
The pregnant woman watched their faces and understood something she had not understood when she entered the house.
The older woman did not need the younger woman in burgundy to believe what they had done was right.
She only needed her to be afraid enough of what it meant to keep quiet.
The realization did not make the pregnant woman brave. It made her colder.
She had spent too much time believing fear was the opposite of strength. It wasn’t. Fear was only information. It told you where the danger was. It told you what mattered.
Her phone was six inches away.
She reached for it.
Her arm shook almost immediately. The floor seemed to slide beneath her, though it did not. She stretched her fingers toward the black case, dragged it closer with the tips of two nails, then pulled it into her palm.
The woman in burgundy took a step forward.
The older woman lifted one hand.
No.
The younger woman stopped.
The pregnant woman held the phone against her chest for a second. She had to breathe. Her thumb would not work properly. Her hand was slick with sweat, and she wiped it once against the fabric at her waist.
“You don’t have to do this,” the older woman said.
The pregnant woman looked at her.
The older woman’s voice had changed. Not softer. More exact.
“You have had an accident. You are frightened. We can make sure you are comfortable. We can talk when you are calmer.”
The pregnant woman almost admired the construction of it.
An accident.
Comfortable.
Talk.
Every word was a trapdoor.
“You pushed me,” she said.
The woman in burgundy flinched.
The older woman’s eyes did not.
“You lost your footing,” the older woman said.
“I was standing.”
“You were upset.”
“I was standing.”
“You were pulling away.”
“Because she had her hands on me.”
The younger woman in burgundy stared at her.
The pregnant woman saw panic rise in the other woman’s face, quick and raw. It was there in the way her mouth opened without sound, in the slight tremor at the base of her throat. The younger woman had wanted to frighten her. She had wanted to force a confession, an apology, a retreat.
She had not wanted a woman on the floor.
That distinction did not comfort the pregnant woman. Harm did not become smaller because someone had misjudged its shape.
“She grabbed me,” the pregnant woman said.
“I was trying to stop you from leaving,” the woman in burgundy whispered.
“You were trying to stop me from calling him.”
The younger woman looked toward the staircase.
The older woman’s face had become stiller than before. A person could be still in many ways. There was the stillness of grief, the stillness of shock, the stillness of restraint.
May you like
This was the stillness of someone calculating which version of the truth would survive.
“You are not thinking clearly,” the older woman said.
