Brooke reached for my elbow but stopped before touching me. “Come with me.”
I nodded.
Ryan stepped in front of us.
“Claire, don’t do this.”
The words were quiet now.
Almost tender.
That frightened me more than the shouting.
“Move.”
“We can handle this.”
“You had your chance to handle it when your father put a cigarette against my body.”
“He wasn’t trying to hurt the baby.”
The room went dead.
I looked at him.
Not trying to hurt the baby.
As if hurting me had been a separate category with negotiable importance.
Brooke heard it too.
Her face changed.
“Move, Ryan.”
He looked at his sister.
She held up her phone.
“I recorded it.”
Grant straightened.
Ryan went still.
Diane whispered, “Brooke.”
Brooke’s hand shook so badly the screen trembled. “I started recording when Dad told Ryan to hold her.”
Grant lunged one step forward.
Brooke backed away.
“Give me that phone.”
“No.”
“Brooke.”
“No.”
His face became something I recognized instantly: the expression of a man discovering that fear had stopped working.
The dispatcher was still on my phone.
“Are you hearing this?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Stay on the line.”
Brooke and I moved down the hallway and into the guest bedroom. She locked the door behind us.
The moment the latch clicked, my legs gave out.
I sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped both arms around my stomach.
Brooke knelt several feet away.
“I’m sorry.”
I could barely breathe.
“For what part?”
Her eyes filled.
“All of it.”
“That is too large an answer.”
She nodded, crying now.
“I laughed.”
“Yes.”
“I said the thing about the sweater.”
“Yes.”
