Chapter 1 - THE CALL HE THOUGHT WAS A JOKE
Sylvia’s hands struck my shoulders from behind.
My lower back hit the granite counter. Pain flashed through my stomach, and I slid onto the kitchen tile with both arms wrapped around my seven-month belly.
“Servants don’t sit with this family,” she said.
Beyond the doorway, twelve Christmas guests stared down at their plates. David’s new partners, their spouses and two county officials had watched his mother force me to cook since before sunrise. None of them moved.
“Something’s wrong,” I whispered.
David entered in his navy suit, looked at me on the floor and reached for my phone before I could.
“Call 911,” I said. “Please.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket.
“You’re having another panic attack.”
“I’m bleeding.”
His eyes dropped to the tile beneath my maternity dress. For one second, I saw fear.
Then he looked toward the dining room.
“I just made partner,” he said under his breath. “I’m not having an ambulance turn Christmas dinner into gossip.”
I tried to pull myself toward the doorway. Sylvia stepped in front of me while David removed my phone and held it over the tile.
“I’m a lawyer,” he said. “If you accuse my mother, I’ll tell them you fell during one of your episodes. You won’t win.”
He smashed the phone beneath his shoe.
The screen cracked beside my hand.
A young woman from his firm, Rachel Monroe, rose from the table. David pointed at her.
“Sit down.”
She did.
That frightened me almost as much as the pain.
I forced myself upright against the cabinet.
“Then call my father.”
Sylvia laughed. “The deadbeat who didn’t attend your wedding?”
David pulled out his own phone. “Fine. We’ll let him hear what you’re really like.”
I gave him the number one digit at a time.
He put the call on speaker.
A man answered on the third ring.
“Identify yourself.”
“This is David Lawson,” my husband said. “Your daughter is causing a scene.”
The voice changed.
“Put Anna on the phone.”
David’s smile faded.
I leaned toward the speaker. “Dad, I’m thirty-one weeks pregnant. Sylvia pushed me. David broke my phone, and they won’t call an ambulance.”
“Are you conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me the address?”
David reached to end the call.
Rachel finally moved.
She stepped between us, took out her own phone and dialed 911.
My father remained on the speaker as the dispatcher answered.
“Anna,” he said, steady but no longer formal, “stay with me.”
David stared at his screen.
The contact name had appeared beneath the number.
Chief Justice Samuel Whitaker.
May you like
David had spent three years calling me an orphan.
He had never asked why I used my mother’s last name.
