“Does it sting?” I asked her, brushing a stray lock of hair away from her damp temple.
“A little bit,” she whispered. She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, leaving a tiny smudge of dark gray dirt on her pale cheek.
“You are being very brave,” I said. “Just like Barnaby.”
She looked down at the stuffed rabbit, whose gray felt ears were worn thin from years of being carried around. A small pink silk ribbon was tied around the rabbit’s neck, a ribbon I had bought for five dollars at the craft store in town last Tuesday to replace the old one.
The ribbon was the exact shade of the one Russell had used to bind my wrists only minutes before. I looked down at my hands, where the red marks from the silk were still visible on my skin, a hot, stinging reminder of his grip.
I took another piece of the torn dress and folded it over the first layer. The cotton was thin, and the dark stain soaked through almost instantly, turning the bright yellow fabric into a muddy brown.
“Mommy,” Phoebe said, her voice dropping even lower, her eyes fixed on the concrete floor. “Why is Daddy mad at us?”
“He is just confused right now, baby,” I said, though the words felt like sand in my mouth.
“I saw Aunt Gwendolyn,” she said. “She had the big silver scissors from the desk.”
I kept my hand steady against her forehead, but my fingers grew cold.
“We will talk about that later,” I said. “Right now, we need to keep this tight.”
By eight o’clock, the patch of red had soaked through a second strip of my hem. Phoebe sat on the bottom step, her eyes half-closed, her head leaning heavily against my shoulder.
A sharp clatter echoed from the top of the stairs. The small iron slide on the door slot scraped open, letting in a thin wedge of yellow hallway light.
“Heather,” Russell said. His voice was muffled, coming through the narrow opening.
I stood up, leaving Phoebe on the step, and walked to the door. I had to look upward to face the small metal grate.
“Russell, she is still bleeding,” I said, keeping my voice low and level. “She needs a doctor. She needs stitches.”
I heard him shift his weight on the landing above. The faint smell of his expensive cologne, the cedar-infused woodsmoke scent he always wore, drifted through the slot.
“You will stay in this room until you learn how to apologize properly,” he said.
“This is not about me,” I said, pressing my palm flat against the cold iron of the door. “Phoebe fell. She hit her head on the corner of the table. She is five years old, Russell.”
“She is lying to protect you,” he said, his voice rising, fast and sharp. “Gwendolyn is upstairs in tears, with her gown ruined. You taught Phoebe to cover for you.”
I stared through the narrow horizontal slit, seeing only the bridge of his nose and his eyes, narrowed and dry.
“I am not asking for myself,” I said. “Call the pediatrician. Ask him to come to the back gate. You do not even have to let him in the main house.”
“Not until you apologize to her,” he said. “Not a word before then.”
“She had a tear in her dress before she came in,” I said, my voice dropping an octave, trying to reach the sensible part of him that surely still existed. “Phoebe was across the room. There were no scissors near her.”
“I saw the dress, Heather,” Russell snapped, his breath whistling slightly through the metal grate. “It is ruined. Six thousand dollars of French silk, shredded. Gwendolyn was sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.”
“And your daughter is bleeding on a concrete floor,” I said. “Does that carry any weight with you at all?”
He paused, and for a second, I heard the familiar clicking of his heavy gold bezel. He was checking his watch again, measuring his time against his impatience.
“The doctor will see her when you show some respect,” he said. “This family is going public in three weeks, Heather. Do you have any idea what the board would say if they saw you behaving like this? You are unstable.”
