Chapter 1
The chandelier light kept shaking on the polished marble even after the wheels stopped. I was on my side with my cheek almost touching the floor, and the bright orange spill was spreading right beside my face, close enough I could smell something sharp and sweet and wrong. My dress had ridden up around my knees and I couldn't push myself up. Behind me I heard the soft scrape of the wheelchair where it had tipped near the ornate side table, and the white papers still sliding and settling around it. The older woman in black hadn't moved. She stood a few feet back, her hands empty now, her mouth slightly open like she'd forgotten how to finish what she'd started.
It didn't make sense that she had been holding that small dark cup to my mouth a second before, her other hand firm on the back of my head, tilting me back while I kept my eyes shut, and that now she was just standing there staring at me on the floor as if someone else had pushed me. The maid's footsteps had been quick on the marble. She'd grabbed the older woman's arm and said something I couldn't hear over the rush in my ears, and then the older woman had let go of the cup and shoved the handles of my wheelchair forward instead.
My name is Elena and I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant that morning in the hallway outside the foundation ballroom.
At 10:14 the hallway had been empty except for us. I remembered the double wood doors at the far end staying closed, the crystal chandeliers humming faintly overhead, the side table with its brass edge catching the light. The older woman - my husband's mother, Diane - had come up behind my wheelchair without asking, her dark earrings swinging as she leaned over me. She held the small dark cup in one hand and tipped my chin with the other. I kept my eyes mostly closed because I'd learned it was easier to wait it out than to argue when she used that stern voice. The liquid inside was dark at first, then when I didn't swallow, she pressed harder. The maid, Carla, appeared from the service corridor near the kitchen, her white collar bright against her uniform, her mouth open as she called out and reached for Diane's wrist.
Carla got there and grabbed Diane's forearm. Diane's fingers slipped and the cup came away from my mouth without me ever swallowing. For a half second I thought it was over. Then Diane's hands dropped to the push handles of my black wheelchair and she gave it a hard shove, letting go as it rolled. I felt the wheels catch on the marble, papers scattering under them - white sheets someone had left on the side table - fluttering and catching in the spokes as I rolled fast and uncontrolled toward the doors. I tried to grip the armrests but my hands slid. Near the ornate table the front wheel caught and the chair tipped, and then I was on the floor with a dull thud and the orange liquid - not from the cup, from somewhere else, a glass that had been on the table - pooling and splattering warm beside my cheek.
I wasn't sure if the orange was juice or something else. It looked too bright to be juice.
Diane said, "You didn't need to make a scene."
Carla knelt beside me and said, "Don't move, honey. Don't move."
May you like
I whispered, "Please don't leave me here."
The double doors at the end of the hallway shivered. The brass handles turned from the other side, and the heavy wood began to swing inward, letting in a slice of brighter light from the lobby. Footsteps echoed, and I could see a man's black shoes and the edge of a light gray double-breasted suit and the corner of a brown hard-sided briefcase he carried in his left hand, but I couldn't see his face yet, and Diane was still frozen with her eyes wide, looking straight at me and not at the door that was about to open.
