Page 113 of What You left in Me

The fork slides in my hand. I could make a joke.What duties, polishing the piano with my tears?But humor feels like a bad outfit. I tuck my chin and try to look soothing. Finn’s fingertips tap once against the stem of his glass. The sound is tiny and volcanic.

Richard smiles at me in that thin, nice way that splits me in two. He doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He thinks it’s the girl he helped raise. It is. It’s also not. I want to crawl under the tablecloth and cry. I also want to knock my glass over and watch the red spread and saythere, that’s us.

Conversation staggers along. Richard mentions a book he’s pretending to read. Eleanor says the council is planning a fundraiser for the hospital’s new wing and “of course the Wagners will be involved.” Finn contributes a noncommittal sound that could meanyesorburn it down. I focus on chewing. If I chew, I can’t talk. If I can’t talk, I can’t confess. Simple math.

Lydia returns with the roast. I catch her eye by accident. She flinches. The tray dips, clatters, rights itself. Eleanor’s head swivels with terrifying calm.

“Careful,” Eleanor says. Her voice is silk over a blade. “We don’t need a mess.”

Lydia nods too quickly, leans toward Eleanor as if pulled by gravity, and… whispers something. I can’t hear the words, but I can hear the shape of them: breathless, awful. Mom’s face shifts through three colors in one heartbeat: blank, paper-white, then a flush like fever. She blinks once like a camera shutter. The roped muscle in my stomach twangs.

“Lydia,” I say, because my mouth betrays me. “Are you…”

“Fine,” she squeaks, and backs away so fast a fork slides off the tray. It lands with a bright, damning ping.

The room changes in the way the body does. Heart speeding, sweat waking, muscles bracing for impact. I feel the earth tilt, a small but real adjustment.

Mom sets her napkin down. Not folded this time.Dropped. A white flag with blood in its future.

“Tell me, darling,” she says softly, which is never good. “Where were you this afternoon? Truly.”

I swallow. The wordcafésits like a pit in my mouth. “At the cafe. At…”

“Not here,” she snaps. “Not with your family. Running. Hiding.Whoring.”

The word slices me open.

“Eleanor,” Richard says, a thread of warning in his voice. He looks more lost than angry, which makes me want to throw up.

“Don’t use that patronizing tone,” I say, because apparently my brain loves playing chicken with death. “I’m not ten.”

“Then, stop behaving like it!” she snaps, and stands.

Time leaves the room. That’s the only way to describe it. The clocks keep ticking but everything slows and goes bright and thin, like a winter morning you can see your breath in. Mom’s chair scrapes back a few inches, enough to sound like a threat. I push my own chair back before I can think. It answers with a scrape that sounds likedon’t you dare.

She circles the table, slow as a cat, pearls shifting with each step. Lydia has gone statue-still by the door. Finn hasn’t moved. But I can feel him like heat at my right shoulder, held still the way a storm holds still.

Mom stops in front of me. Close enough for me to smell her perfume, expensive gardenia and something meaner underneath. She tilts her head, the way she does when she’s about to deliver a line she’s been rehearsing in her skull all day.

“You ungrateful, shameless girl,” she says, screeching and harsh. “After everything I’ve done to keep this family’s nameintact…” her voice catches, then hardens, “you disgrace us like this?”

The floor falls away.

“What…” I start, and don’t finish, because her hand flashes and connects with my cheek.

The sound is obscene. A crack, a pop, a small explosion in a room that does not allow explosions. My head snaps sideways. Pain blooms hot and loud. Tears prick stupidly fast. It’s not the worst pain I’ve ever felt, not by a long shot, but it’s the most public. And that matters.

“Eleanor!” Richard’s fork clatters onto porcelain. His voice is hoarse, horrified. “Enough!”

I taste iron. Shame floods my veins, a hot, liquid tide that wants to drown me standing. I stare at the corner of the table because looking anyone in the eye feels like stepping into sunlight naked. This can’t be happening, but it is. My face burns and my vision blurs. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears and also the ghost of every lecture she ever gave me about dignity, the speeches about poise, the endless lessons on how to keep your private mess private.

She always said she’d protect me from shame. But she’s the one parading it like theater.

I lift my hand to my cheek because I need to make sure my face is still there. Mom draws her arm back again like she might strike me twice. I flinch and the room pivots.

And then Finn is up.

The scrape of his chair is loud. He moves so fast the air shudders. His hand closes around Mom’s wrist mid-swing. Not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to stop. Everything about him goes very still, which is somehow worse than shouting.