Chapter 1 - The Staircase
Judith Whitaker shoved me with both hands.
There was no stumble before it. No argument about whether she touched me. I felt both palms strike between my shoulder blades while I was carrying a casserole toward the dining room.
“Maybe these stairs will teach you to stop stealing my son!”
The dish left my hands.
Ceramic burst against the first step. Green beans, fried onions, and cream sauce streaked across the polished oak as my right foot missed the edge.
I remember the banister hitting my ribs.
Then the landing.
Pain came from everywhere at once.
Someone at the Thanksgiving table shouted my name. Graham’s cousin dropped a wineglass. Judith stood at the top of the staircase with her hands suddenly lifted beside her face.
“Oh my God,” she said.
The performance began before I stopped falling.
“She slipped.”
Nobody answered.
Judith’s eyes moved across the relatives gathered in her Oak Park home.
“She slipped,” she repeated, pointing at them now. “And anyone who says otherwise can leave my house forever.”
My husband came down the stairs.
For one hopeful second, I thought Graham was going to kneel beside me.
Instead, he grabbed my wrist.
“Come on.”
My left side screamed when he pulled.
“Stop.”
“Stand up, Nora.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t do this here.”
I stared at him.
His mother had just thrown me down a staircase, and he was worried about where I chose to be injured.
“He never wanted this,” Graham said under his breath. “Let’s handle this within the family.”
I knocked his hand away.
A broken piece of the casserole dish lay beside me.
I closed my fingers around its handle.
“Call an ambulance,” I said, “or I’ll tell everyone exactly what she did.”
That frightened him more than my leg.
An ambulance came.
At Rush University Medical Center, Dr. Allison Mercer ordered X-rays of my ankle, ribs, wrist, and forearm because I couldn’t explain why several areas hurt.
The fall had fractured my right ankle and two ribs.
Then she stopped at one image.
“These are older.”
I stared at the screen.
Two pale lines marked ribs on the opposite side.
Another showed a partially healed fracture near my left forearm.
“How old?”
“Different ages. Weeks to months.”
Judith appeared behind the glass outside the room with Graham beside her.
She had changed out of her dinner dress.
She was still wearing the pearls.
Dr. Mercer lowered the film.
“Have you fallen more than once recently?”
The garage in February.
The patio in April.
The laundry-room steps in September.
Three accidents.
Three occasions when Judith had been present.
Three times Graham had told doctors I was clumsy when stressed.
I had laughed about it.
So had he.
Dr. Mercer touched the oldest fracture with the end of her pen.
“This one healed without treatment.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Did you ever have severe rib pain and not get imaging?”
I remembered waking after a family party in February unable to take a full breath.
Graham said I had fallen against the garage workbench after drinking too much.
I remembered drinking one glass of wine.
Nothing after dessert.
Through the glass, Judith saw which X-ray Dr. Mercer was pointing to.
Her face changed.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
And Graham, standing beside her, saw her reaction too.
He looked away.
May you like
That was when I stopped asking myself whether the staircase had been the first time.
I started wondering how many times they already knew about.
