CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
EM
I push away from Wilbur, but my feet tangle and I fall to the side. He catches me, snagging me against him, his lips pressed near my cheek. “Careful. You’ll have to take better care of yourself now you’re carrying my baby.”
“Let me go.”
He shoves me and I drop to my knees, blindly crawling along the tiles, their gleaming surface cold against my flesh. When I’m out of range, I get to my feet, staggering along the corridor to the bathroom.
Stefan gets there first, blocking my way. “You don’t want to see in there.”
I slap at his hands, trying to get around him. The whole moment carries a feeling of déjà vu. I’ve spent so many nights where she didn’t come home and I expected to wake to the police knocking on the door, saying she’s dead. So many times I watched her chest rise and fall as she lay unconscious on the bed, the couch, the floor. Wondering if it would hitch. Wondering if it would stop.
Wondering if I would call for help if it did.
Now it’s here and I feel numb, like this is a play we’re acting for someone else’s benefit.
“Let her say goodbye,” Wilbur says with a snigger. “That woman’s better off dead and she knows it.”
But Stefan closes the door and stands like a sentry in front of it.
“Let me see.” I kick at his ankle, and he doesn’t even flinch. Like he doesn’t even feel it. “I want to see my mother.”
His face changes at the last word, mouth twisting into a pitying line. “No, you don’t, sweetheart. Not like this.”
He catches my wrists and moves me back. There’s a patch of crimson on the cuff of his white shirt. I touch my fingertip to it, then rub it against my thumb. It’s still wet. Still warm, though that might equally be from his body heat. “She might still be alive.”
“No.”
He tries to guide me towards a seat but I back away, resting against the wall when my butt hits it. My mind was already struggling to process everything in front of me. It stops trying. Instead, it just sits back, letting the flow of information from my senses wash in and out, unaffected by its passage.
Stefan mumbles, “I’ll take good care of her, I promise. I’ll put her somewhere you can visit.”
The words mean nothing. In through my ear, drifting through my brain. The silence that follows them has the same impact. None at all.
Stefan moves away, dialling numbers on his phone and talking with low urgency to the people who answer. Arranging a clean-up crew, just like the one Caylon took part in. The one that scarred him deeper than he seems to know.
Wilbur clears his throat. “Come over here, Emily. I’ll take you through to my room and you can clean up there.”
I stay where I am. After a second, the words dissipate. Nothing changes from how it was before he spoke.
He clears his throat again and my fingers flutter up to touch where the knot dug into my flesh, pressing at the bruise to see if it still hurts. Waiting a second, then pressing again, just in case it changed. Then again.
“Come on.”
There’s suddenly another noise. A loud one.
Broken glass? Smashed concrete? The sounds merge, then fade away. Wilbur moves to check the camera feed near the door. From my angle, I can’t see anything except the flash and shadow of movement.
“Looks like all your self-appointed heroes are turning up today,” Wilbur says in a snarky tone that penetrates further than his last few pronouncements. He presses a button next to the viewing screen. “Fuck off or I’ll send someone out to kill you.”
A hero?
My eyes creep over to the door I’ve been barred from entering.
I never thought of my mother as a hero. Not for me. Not for anyone.
A frown slowly crawls its way across my forehead, knotting my brow. “Why did she come here?”
