Chapter 5 - How My Feet Ended Up on the Sill
My arms had started to shake in a way I couldn't hide. It wasn't dramatic. It was the small, ugly tremor that runs from the shoulder down when a muscle gives out. The curtain bit into my palms. My shoes kept slipping a half inch on the painted sill, then catching. Behind the sheer, the daylight was too bright and the air coming through the cracked window was cold on my neck.
Daniel didn't move the scissors, but his eyes kept dropping to my hands. He could see it. I was losing my grip.
My name is Anna. I was twenty-eight and six months pregnant that morning, and I hadn't climbed up there to make a point.
It had started maybe twenty minutes earlier, in that same room. The housekeeper — Mrs. Cole — had a stepladder open by the window and a vacuum hose coiled on the floor. She'd been taking down the sheers to wash them. I remember the dust in the light. I remember my back aching from the stairs.
His mother came in while Mrs. Cole was working. Margaret. Short gray hair combed neat, pearl necklace, that dark green blouse tucked into light pants. She looked at the ladder, then at me, and said the heavy drapes needed to be taken down too. They were too heavy for the rod with the way I was pulling on them, Mrs. Cole told her. She said she'd do it after lunch when the handyman was back.
"No," Margaret said. "Now. Before Daniel gets home."
I offered to hold the fabric while Mrs. Cole unhooked it. That was all. I wasn't trying to help prove anything. I just didn't want her on that ladder alone. The sill was wide — that old mansion trim, almost a foot deep — and I stepped up on the inside edge to reach the top pleat where it had caught. Mrs. Cole told me to get down. She actually put her hand on my ankle and said, "Honey, please. You shouldn't be up there."
Margaret was standing right behind me. I felt her hand flat between my shoulder blades. Not a shove that would knock you over. A push, firm and quick, that moved my weight forward toward the glass. My hands grabbed for anything. They found the off-white curtain.
I heard Mrs. Cole gasp. She dropped to her knees and grabbed the lower part of the curtain with both hands and didn't let go. She was looking up at me the whole time.
"Daniel, help me." That's what I said. I didn't scream it. I couldn't get enough air to scream. I said it to the doorway because I'd heard his shoes on the hardwood. He'd just come in with the scissors from the packages in the hall. He stopped when he saw me.
In the present, on the sill, my breath caught saying it again. Telling it made my throat close.
Daniel stared at me. "You stepped up there yourself?" he said. His voice was low. "Mom said you climbed up to —"
"To get attention?" I finished for him. My fingers were white around the fabric. "Do I look like I want attention up here?"
He didn't answer. The scissors tipped a fraction away from the curtain. Just a fraction.
Margaret made a small sound behind him, impatient. "She's exaggerating," she said. "I steadied her. She lost her balance. This whole thing is an accident that got out of hand."
Mrs. Cole, still kneeling, didn't look away from Daniel. "You felt nothing?" she said to Margaret, without turning. "You had your hand on her back."
"I touched her jacket," Margaret said quickly. "To keep her from falling forward. Ask anyone. I tried to help."
"Then why tell him to cut it?" Mrs. Cole said. Her voice shook. She kept both hands locked on the curtain.
Daniel looked down at the scissors in his own hand like he'd forgotten why he was holding them. Then he looked back up at me, at my shoes on the sill, at the way my belly pressed against the curtain and threw me off balance. I could see him doing the math — the height, the glass, the concrete two stories down past the shrubs.
"I didn't climb for attention," I said again. Quiet. "I was pushed."
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Margaret stepped closer, her shoes loud on the wood. "Daniel. She's tired. She's confused. Let me —"
"Don't," Daniel said. It stopped her. He didn't raise his voice, but his hand tightened on the scissors and for a second I thought he would drop them. He didn't drop them. He just held them there, paused against the fabric, and looked from his mother to me and back again.
