me,” I said through chattering teeth. “Stay with me, little one.”
The terrace lights flickered in the wind.
The next minutes came apart in pieces.
Glass beneath my palms.
Snow on my eyelashes.
The taste of metal in my mouth.
Someone laughing far below.
Then Daniel’s voice.
At first, I thought I imagined it.
“Clara?”
I tried to answer, but all that came out was a small sound.
“Clara!”
A shadow appeared behind the glass at the first door. Daniel’s face came into view, white with terror. He grabbed the handle, cursed, and disappeared. Another man appeared beside him. Then someone ran. There were shouts, footsteps, the rattle of keys.
I remember the door opening.
I remember warmth hitting my face.
I remember Daniel dropping to his knees in the snow, pulling off his jacket, wrapping it around me with hands that shook so badly he could hardly manage the sleeves.
“Look at me,” he said. “Clara, sweetheart, look at me.”
I tried.
His eyes were the last thing I saw before the hallway lights smeared into white.
When I woke, I was in a hospital room.
The first sound was a monitor beeping beside me. The second was Daniel breathing like he had been holding panic inside his chest for hours. My whole body felt far away. My hands were wrapped in warm blankets. An IV line ran into my arm. A blood pressure cuff squeezed and released.
I blinked against the fluorescent light.
“Clara?” Daniel stood so fast his chair scraped the floor. “Thank God.”
My throat hurt when I tried to speak.
“Baby?”
He took my hand carefully, as though I were made of glass.
“Heartbeat is strong,” he said, voice breaking. “They’re monitoring contractions. The doctor said we got you inside in time.”
In time.
The words should have comforted me. Instead, they opened a door in my mind, and everything came rushing back.
Evelyn’s hand between my shoulder blades.
The click of the lock.
Her mouth forming the words, “You shouldn’t even be carrying his child.”
My phone in her hand.
I turned my head.
Daniel’s parents were in the room. His mother, Margaret, stood near the foot of the bed with both hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. His father, Paul, stared out the window, jaw set hard. And in the corner, wrapped in a hospital blanket she did not need, sat Evelyn.
She looked pale, but not guilty. Angry.
As soon as my eyes found hers, she spoke.
“It was an accident.”
Her voice was soft, wounded, prepared.
Daniel stiffened beside me.
Evelyn looked at him, then at her parents. “The rooftop door sticks. Clara must have stepped out for air. I thought she came back inside. I didn’t know she was still out there.”
I stared at her.
For years, I had avoided fighting with Evelyn because Daniel loved his family and I did not want to be the reason that love grew complicated. I had swallowed the little comments. The jokes about my job. The insult hidden in the word “sensitive.” The way she touched Daniel’s arm whenever she wanted him to remember that she had known him first.
But I had almost lost my child on that rooftop.
Something in me went still.
“You locked it,” I said.
