「Desi, I'm sorry. Mommy's so sorry. Mommy's going to take you home.」
The floor swam beneath my tears until I couldn't see anything at all.
Stanley hauled me up off the ground. 「What the hell is wrong with you!」
His face was ice. 「Where's Desiree? Where'd that little nuisance run off to?」
I pointed at the powder on the floor, my eyes so red they might as well have been bleeding, my voice scraped raw. 「Right here.」
「What?」
「I said, Desiree is right here!」
Stanley went still for half a second, then let out a cold laugh. 「Glenda, are you out of your mind?」
Brenda snickered. 「Honestly, sis, that acting of yours just keeps getting better and better.」
「What's next, you're going to tell us Desiree's dead and this is her ashes?」
「You'd fake anything for a little sympathy, wouldn't you.」
Stanley lifted his foot and stepped down on the ashes without a flicker of hesitation.
His sole ground back and forth, and fragments of bone scraped against the marble tile with a sound that cut through the room.
「Click. Click.」
Each one drove straight through my eyes and into the back of my skull.
「Nanny Lambert!」 He turned his head toward the living room. 「Bring a broom. Sweep this garbage out and feed it to the dogs.」
「No!」
He shoved me against the wall and pinned me there, so much force I couldn't move. 「Are you done?!」
I stared at his face, inches from mine, and for a moment everything blurred.
On his bad days, his memory would slip—just for a few minutes, but completely.
Once, he hadn't recognized me at all, shoved me away like an intruder. When he came back to himself, he dropped to his knees and slapped his own face over and over until his lip split and bled.
He held me, tears streaming, and said, 「If one day I forget even you—if I turn into someone who isn't me anymore—hit me. Hit me hard enough to wake me up. Please, don't give up on me. Promise me that.」
I gathered every last scrap of strength in my body and raised my arm.
He caught my hand, twisted it aside, and slapped me across the face.
The slap I'd been about to give him landed on me instead.
He held nothing back. Blood seeped from the corner of my mouth, and my cheek swelled instantly.
He flicked his wrist in disgust. 「You actually tried to hit me? You really don't know when to quit.」
That slap killed whatever was left.
The hand he'd struck me with trembled on its own, and he pressed it down hard, his expression darkening with even deeper irritation.
Brenda reacted fast, shrieking as she rushed over and shoved me. 「You tried to hit Stanley!」
「You took my place and now you dare raise a hand to him? Have you no shame?!」
I lost my balance and fell.
My right hand came down on a jagged shard of the urn, and blood welled up, mixing with the ash-grey powder on the floor into a smear so gruesome it didn't look real.
Brenda crouched beside me and spoke in a voice only the two of us could hear. 「Oh, sis. I forgot to mention.」
「The killer? I hired him. And the money came straight from Stanley's own account.」
「I used your husband's money to buy your daughter's life.」
Everything went white. Every drop of blood in my body slammed upward.
「I'll kill you!」
I locked both hands around Brenda's throat.
She screamed but didn't fight back. Instead she curled forward, clutching her stomach, doubling over in pain.
「Stanley, help! My stomach, it hurts, the baby, our baby……」
「Brenda!」
Stanley's face went white. He kicked me square in the shoulder.
Pain tore through me and I skidded half a meter across the floor.
He scooped Brenda up off the ground. 「If anything happens to that baby, I will never let you go.」
I screamed until something in my throat gave out. 「She killed Desiree! She hired the killer! She murdered our child!」
