Chương 2
“Save it.”
They got Claire high enough for Maria to reach beneath the railing.
“Give me your hand.”
Claire did.
Maria caught her wrist again.
Daniel hooked an arm under Claire’s shoulder.
For several seconds all three bodies jammed awkwardly against the railing, nobody strong enough to lift cleanly and nobody willing to change position.
Then Claire’s elbow cleared the stone.
Maria grabbed the back of her dress.
Daniel pulled beneath her arms.
Claire came over the edge hard, landing on her side with enough force to knock the air out of her.
Maria collapsed beside her.
The first thing Claire did was put both hands over her stomach.
The second thing she did was stare at Daniel.
He was breathing heavily.
“Claire.”
She pulled away when he touched her.
It was not a dramatic movement. She moved perhaps six inches.
Daniel froze.
Evelyn stood near the glass doors.
For the first time that morning, she looked old.
Claire had known her for six years and had never thought of Evelyn as old. Elegant, yes. Precise. Expensive. Difficult in ways that were often presented as standards. Evelyn could make a waiter apologize without raising her voice and could reduce Daniel to adolescence with a single question about his posture or his schedule.
But not old.
Now she seemed suddenly small inside the cream blouse she had bought in Milan and once told Claire not to wash because domestic machines were “brutal.”
Maria rolled onto her back.
Her chest rose and fell beneath her uniform.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Maria said, “I’m calling 911.”
Evelyn looked at her.
“You work for me.”
Maria laughed once.
It was a strange, breathless sound.
“I don’t think I do anymore.”
Claire’s phone was six feet away.
Maria pushed herself up.
Daniel reached for it.
“Don’t,” Claire said.
He stopped again.
She had never noticed before how often Daniel obeyed a command only after deciding whether the person giving it deserved to be obeyed.
Maria picked up the phone.
The screen was shattered across the lower corner, but the emergency call still worked.
While she spoke to the dispatcher, Claire remained on the stone with her hands around her stomach.
She waited for movement.
A kick.
A roll.
Anything.
Nothing came.
“Claire?”
Daniel knelt several feet away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t get to say okay.”
His eyes dropped.
Maria was giving the address.
Claire pressed her palm harder against her abdomen.
“Move,” she whispered.
Daniel looked up.
“What?”
She was not speaking to him.
“Come on,” Claire said to the child inside her. “Please.”
Then she felt it.
A small, firm pressure near her right side.
One kick.
Claire closed her eyes.
Another.
She started crying without making a sound.
Maria, still on the phone, reached down and covered Claire’s wrist with her free hand.
Daniel looked away.
Evelyn did not.
Sirens arrived eleven minutes later.
The first responders entered through the downstairs foyer because nobody had opened the private elevator, and a firefighter later complained mildly that the Bennett mansion had too many doors.
It was such an ordinary annoyance that Claire almost laughed.
She did not.
Paramedics placed a cervical collar around her neck despite her protests. They checked her blood pressure twice, asked about pain, bleeding, contractions, dizziness, and loss of consciousness. One of them, a woman named Reese according to the patch on her shirt, crouched beside Claire and spoke in an even voice.
“How many weeks?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Any complications so far?”
“No.”
“Placenta issues?”
“No.”
“Blood type?”
Claire knew it but suddenly could not say it.
She stared.
“It’s okay,” Reese said. “We’ll get it from the hospital.”
“I know it.”
“You’ve had a frightening morning. You don’t have to pass a test.”
Claire turned her head and saw Daniel standing near the terrace doors while a police officer spoke to him.
Evelyn was beside another officer.
Maria sat on a lounge chair holding an ice pack against her right wrist.
Nobody had handcuffed anyone.
That bothered Claire far more than it should have.
She wanted a visible line.
Bad person here.
Good person there.
Metal around wrists.
Doors closing.
Instead there were questions.
Names.
Addresses.
Clarifications.
Officer voices kept deliberately neutral.
“Ma’am, did you see Mrs. Bennett touch the ladder?”
“Sir, when did you arrive?”
“Were there prior threats?”
“Who owns the property?”
“Is there surveillance on the terrace?”
“Does the strap belong here?”
“What happened before the fall?”
The world did not know what had happened.
Claire did.
Maria did.
Possibly Daniel.
But the world had not yet made up its mind.
The paramedics moved Claire onto a stretcher.
Daniel stepped toward her.
“I’m going with you.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“No.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
She looked at Maria.
Maria lowered the ice pack.
“I’ll go.”
Evelyn spoke from across the terrace.
“Maria, don’t be absurd.”
Maria turned her head.
Evelyn had regained some of her composure. She had smoothed the front of her blouse. Her silver-gray hair remained almost perfectly arranged except for one loose strand above her ear.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Maria said.
It was the first time Claire had ever heard Maria speak to Evelyn that way.
The silence afterward seemed to surprise everyone, including Maria.
The paramedic pushed the stretcher toward the elevator.
Daniel followed for three steps.
Claire pointed at him.
“You said you told her to scare me.”
His face tightened.
“I need to explain.”
“To the police.”
“I will.”
“Not to me.”
The elevator doors closed between them.
Maria sat beside Claire in the ambulance.
For the first few minutes neither woman spoke.
Maria’s hands were trembling.
She hid them by folding them beneath her thighs.
Claire noticed.
“You hurt your wrist.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.”
Maria looked at the floor.
“I’ve had worse.”
Claire wanted to ask when.
She did not.
The ambulance turned sharply.
May you like
Maria braced a foot against the base of the bench.
Claire watched the city move through the rear window in fractured glimpses: a gas station, a woman jogging with a stroller, a man washing a delivery van, traffic stalled beneath an overpass.
