still think this is about help,’ he said.
Sienna stepped from the shadows near the entrance to the pier, pulling a black coat tight around her narrow body. Rain had flattened her blonde hair to her face. She looked less glamorous than Mara remembered from dinner parties. Smaller. Sharper. Afraid.
Mara opened her car door.
Cold rain slapped her cheeks.
Sienna looked at Mara’s belly and quickly away.
‘You brought her here?’ Mara asked.
Adrian came around the hood of the car. ‘Walk.’
‘No.’
His hand closed around her upper arm.
The wedding ring bit into her skin.
Mara tried to pull away, but the pier boards were slick beneath her shoes. She stumbled. Adrian caught her before she fell, and for one impossible second they looked like a husband helping his pregnant wife through bad weather.
That was how he had lived his entire life. Arranging cruelty so it resembled care from far away.
‘You should have signed the papers when I asked,’ he whispered.
Mara looked at Sienna. ‘Are you part of this?’
Sienna’s lips parted. No words came.
Adrian shoved Mara forward, past the locked bait shop, past the rusted benches, toward the railing where the river churned black below.
Mara’s heart began to pound so hard she could hear it beneath the rain.
She reached under her sweater and pressed the folded policy page against her skin. She did not know why. Proof mattered only if she lived.
‘Adrian,’ she said, forcing her voice steady. ‘Our daughter is moving. Please. Take me to the hospital if you want. Say I had a breakdown. Say anything. But do not do this.’
For the first time that night, something like regret crossed his face.
Then Sienna said, ‘Adrian, we need to go.’
The regret vanished.
He put both hands on Mara’s shoulders.
She grabbed his coat. ‘Look at me.’
He did.
‘She will have your eyes,’ Mara said.
His mouth tightened.
Then he pushed.
Mara hit the railing with her hip, flipped sideways, and fell into the dark.
The river swallowed her scream.
For one terrible second, there was no up or down, only freezing water and the enormous weight of her body dragging her beneath the pier. Her shoulder struck something hard. Pain flashed white behind her eyes. Then her knees slammed into wood.
Not riverbed.
A boat.
An old sailboat had been trapped under the pier after a flood months ago, its mast snapped, its hull wedged against the support beams. Mara crashed across the broken mast and rolled toward the water again. Her right hand caught a rope slick with algae.
She held on.
Above, Adrian’s voice cut through the storm.
‘Do you see her?’ Sienna asked.
A light moved over the water, not reaching beneath the boards.
‘No,’ Adrian said.
‘Will they believe she jumped?’
‘They’ll believe a grieving husband with a forty-two-million-dollar policy.’
Mara tried to call out, but river water and blood filled her mouth. Her ribs burned. Her left shoulder hung strangely, useless with pain. She clutched the rope with her right hand and pressed her forearm to her stomach.
Celeste moved again.
Weak.
But alive.
Mara closed her eyes.
‘Breathe with me, little one,’ she whispered. ‘Just breathe.’
Adrian and Sienna left after a few minutes. Mara heard the car
