“Sabrina?”
Her eyes drifted to me. They tried to focus, but slid past my shoulder, then came back and settled. “Hello, Alyssa.”
Her voice turned my stomach as my brain caught up. She greeted me the way you would someone you ran into at the store, and sounded far away at the same time. Something told me I would need to be cautious in how I engaged with her.
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought you two went running. I heard the door.”
“How did you get in here?”
“Where’s Julian?” she looked around the room, eyes wide and unblinking.
“Sabrina,howdid you get in here?” I tried to keep my voice even. I set the knife down on the cutting board, and turned to fully face her, keeping my hands loose at my sides.
“He uses a code.” She lifted her heels, gesturing vaguely with them. “I’ve watched him put it in. You stand close enough to a man, enough times, you see things.” She said it like she was giving me dating advice.
“How… how long?”
“Since last night.” She tilted her head, and a rueful expression moved across her face. “You weren’t supposed to be here, you know. You broke up. I came to surprise him.”
She glanced down at the robe like she was remembering an outfit she’d been proud of. “He was not supposed to have somebody here.” She looked at me when she saidsomebody.
Her mouth worked. “I… I had to find somewhere to go.”
Every instinct I had was firing at once, and the loudest one wasn’t fear yet. It was the one that had spent years in rooms with people who’d been pushed past the place where reason still reached them. I knew theflatness underneath what she was showing me. I knew it was the dangerous part.
“Okay,” I said gently. “Okay, Sabrina. I hear you. I’m going to call you a car, alright? You don’t want to be here when Julian gets back. Let’s get you home.” I reached for my phone hoping that was enough of a cover to get my phone and call for help instead.
“Don’t!” Sabrina shouted, jumping forward as I reached for my phone. I stopped and raised my palms up. “Okay, Sabrina… okay.”
“He wasgetting therewith me.” For the first time her eyes were all the way present, and all the way cold. “Then hereyoucome.”
My heart was racing and I worked to keep it out of me. “Sabrina. I understand you’re upset. But… Julian’s going to be back any minute. You don’t want him to see you like this, do you? Let me help you get home.”
She shook her head. Then, her eyes went to the cutting board and the knife lying next to the half-cut melon, and I saw the thought arrive behind them.
We both lunged for it at the same time. I got my hand on the handle first. Her hand came down over mine, both of us gripping, the blade standing up between us.
Her weight pushed against me, shoving me into the counter edge. My phone skated away across the granite. I had about three inches and years of running on her, and it almost wasn’t enough. She was strong. We pushed and strained as I used my free hand to clamp on her wrist, trying to bend her arm away. Her free hand tried to grab at my throat, grunting, saying something that had my name in it and his name in it,he loves you, you took it, he was mine, you took it. We struggled back and forth with the knife shaking in the air between our four hands.
I was not going to die in this kitchen.
All I could think about was Micah, who had already lost one parent. I could not let him lose me too. I could not leave him parentless. And then it hit me. I also had Julian. Julian was on his way home.
He was forty-some minutes into his run, and he was going to come through that door, to a scene in his kitchen, the way he had walked into a kitchen before, at nineteen years old, to find his mother on the floor.
He could not survive that twice.
The thought went all the way through me, as I drove forward off the counter into her with everything I had. We lost our feet, both of us, tangled together over the knife, and we went down.
We went down hard.
I hit the ground first, on my back, the back of my head cracking against the hardwood hard enough that I felt it in my teeth. Sabrina’s full weight came down on top of me and drove the rest of the air out of me. The kitchen tilted. The light smeared. And somewhere very close by, the knife had come loose from our hands and skittered out on the floor, stopping a foot or two away. I lay there with her on top of me, feeling dizzy with the whole room ringing like a struck glass.
Get up, Alyssa. Get UP. Move!
I was so disoriented, I couldn’t make it happen fast enough. My arms were slow. My head was full of a high thin sound and a pressure that wanted to pull me down through the floor. I blinked and the ceiling swam and I fought to keep it in focus, and through the ringing I felt her lift up off me on her hands.
