Chương 1
"""Victoria Bennett’s heel struck Ava’s phone before Ava understood she meant to do it.
The silver device flew from her hand, hit the edge of the white marble staircase with a crack that seemed too hard for something so small, then bounced twice and skated downward between the balusters. Ava watched it go because for one stupid second the phone mattered more than Victoria’s face. Daniel was waiting for her call. Her hospital number was in it. The photograph from that morning was in it, the grainy profile of a baby who had spent thirty-two weeks refusing to cooperate with ultrasound technicians.
Then Victoria said, “Call your husband again. I’ll tell him that baby isn’t his.”
Ava’s hand went to her belly.
Not dramatically. There was no thought behind it. Her palm simply moved.
Behind Victoria, Eleanor Bennett stopped beside the upstairs railing with one hand still resting on the polished banister. At sixty-seven, Eleanor had learned to disguise surprise better than most people disguised dishonesty. She did not disguise it now.
Ava looked at Victoria.
“You read the test?”
The question changed something.
Until then, Victoria’s mouth had held the satisfied little curve she used when she believed she had found the one fact in a room that belonged only to her. The smile weakened.
That was all Ava needed to know.
“You went into Eleanor’s study.”
“You left it lying around.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Victoria stepped closer.
Her burgundy velvet dress was too formal for six o’clock on a Wednesday, but Victoria had always dressed as if a photographer might appear behind the nearest lamp. Her small diamond earrings moved when she tilted her head.
“You people are unbelievable,” she said. “Do you know that? You lie for months, you hide documents, you sneak around with lawyers, and somehow I’m the one who crossed a line because I opened an envelope?”
“It wasn’t your envelope.”
“It concerned my family.”
“It concerned my uterus.”
Eleanor said, “Victoria, enough.”
Victoria ignored her.
Ava should have moved away then.
Later, in the hospital, she would remember that with a clarity that made her angry at herself. There had been six feet of landing behind her and a sitting room through the open doors to her left. She could have walked there. She could have called for Margaret, the house manager. She could have waited for Eleanor’s driver. She could have done any of the ordinary things people told themselves they would do when a situation became unsafe.
Instead, Ava stood her ground.
Part of it was pride.
Part of it was exhaustion.
And part of it was the fact that for nearly two years she had been moving out of Victoria’s way.
At Michael’s funeral, Victoria had needed the first row.
At the memorial dinner, Victoria had needed the seat beside Eleanor.
When lawyers discussed Michael’s unfinished estate matters, Victoria had needed to know why Ava was attending.
When Ava decided to use one of the embryos she and Michael had created before his illness became terminal, Victoria had needed to know whether the decision was legal, moral, selfish, manipulative, healthy, grotesque, fair to the family, fair to Michael, fair to the future child, and—although she never said it quite so plainly—fair to Victoria.
Ava had moved aside so often that stepping back now felt like agreeing with her.
“You read a private medical report,” Ava said. “What exactly do you think you found?”
Victoria’s smile returned.
“That your new husband isn’t the father.”
Ava stared at her.
For half a second, the sheer stupidity of it almost made her laugh.
Victoria saw something else in her face.
Fear, perhaps.
Guilt.
Whatever Victoria saw pleased her.
“Oh,” she said softly. “He doesn’t know.”
Eleanor came forward. “Victoria.”
“He knows,” Ava said.
Victoria blinked.
“He knew before I was pregnant.”
Another blink.
Ava could feel her pulse under her tongue. The baby shifted low against her right side, a slow pressure that made her want to sit down. She had been standing too long already. Her ankles were swollen. Her lower back hurt. She had spent forty minutes in traffic coming from an appointment she had not wanted to discuss with anyone except Daniel.
Victoria’s expression hardened.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t expect anything from you.”
“You married another man while you were carrying Michael’s child.”
“I married Daniel four months before the transfer.”
Eleanor closed her eyes briefly.
Victoria stared at Ava as if the sentence had been delivered in a foreign language.
“You’re disgusting.”
There were many things Ava might have said.
She might have explained that Michael had signed the consent forms while he was still strong enough to complain about the hospital coffee. She might have explained that he had made her promise not to turn his death into a shrine she was required to live inside. She might have explained that Daniel knew every detail because Daniel had been Michael’s closest friend before he had ever become hers.
She might have explained that grief did not follow Victoria’s preferred calendar.
Instead she said, “Move.”
Victoria didn’t.
“Move, Victoria.”
“I think Daniel deserves to hear what kind of woman he married.”
“From you?”
That landed.
Victoria’s nostrils flared.
Ava saw her shoulder change before the shove came.
Not much. A tightening. A shift in weight.
Victoria’s right hand struck Ava high on the shoulder.
It was not a cinematic blow. It did not send Ava flying.
It was worse because it was ordinary.
A sharp, angry push.
Ava’s body did what an eight-month-pregnant body does when its balance disappears unexpectedly. Her left foot moved backward to catch her. The heel of her bare foot found nothing.
Her cardigan sleeve dragged through Victoria’s fingers.
May you like
Eleanor screamed Victoria’s name.
Ava hit the edge of the first step with her hip, twisted instinctively to protect her belly, and then the staircase became fragments: white marble, pain in her elbow, the violent pull of fabric, a flash of chandelier, her shoulder striking something hard, another step, another, the impossible sound of her own breath leaving her.
