Enough. Enough, already. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear a single word of it.
I don't know how long passed before the bedroom door opened again.
Ivy was barely dressed, her face still flushed, a scatter of red marks down the length of her slim neck.
Water trickled from the bathroom behind her, the only sound in a house where every door had a soldier somewhere behind it.
She leaned against the doorframe like she owned every brick the Baxter name had ever bought, looking down her nose at me, her voice low and mean.
"Throwing yourself at Wallace every single day, begging him to give you a baby. Where do you get the nerve?"
"You want a baby so badly? Fine, you got one. Happy now? One word from me and all three brothers can have a turn with you. Want me to dump you in a gutter next time?"
She kept talking, and she kept advancing, and I had no choice but to back away, one step at a time, until the cold edge of the landing pressed at my heels.
"So Wallace married you. A blood-alliance, a pact between bloodlines. So what? I'm the only one he wants. The way he looked just now, losing himself in me, you sad little thing, have you ever once seen that? You're nothing but a body to use."
Her red lips and white teeth opened and closed, and all I could see was the jealousy soaking through her face.
I almost laughed inside. Three men taking turns degrading me, leaving me broken and bleeding, and she envied that?
No. What she envied was that I'd had a one-in-three chance of carrying Wallace's child, the only blood that mattered under this roof.
The thought made my hand drift, without my meaning it to, to my belly.
I never imagined one small movement would set her off like that.
"A bastard that doesn't even know who its father is, and you've got the gall to gloat? You think you deserve this?"
Afraid Wallace would hear from the room beyond, I played dumb. "Ivy, what are you talking about? I don't understand. I don't know why Wallace took me for that test either, but the baby in my belly is his, it has to be."
She was wild with envy now. "Who said you could carry his child? Who? If I can't give him a baby, then neither can you."
Then she threw out her arm and shoved me, hard.
My heels were already against the stairs. I went straight over backward. The world spun, pain everywhere, and worse in my belly.
Wallace heard the commotion and rushed out.
Ivy made a show of sinking to the floor, crying out. Her head tilted just so, and her face softened into something almost sad, the practiced grief of a girl who had never once been doubted in this Family.
"I call you sister-in-law. I came over to help clean up because I saw you were pregnant. And the second I walk in you start hitting me?"
"Why did you throw yourself down those stairs? Are you trying to frame me, to say I pushed you? I didn't, I swear. Sister-in-law, why are you doing this to me?"
Then, pretending she'd only just noticed Wallace, she sobbed and spoke up for me.
"Wallace, don't worry about me. Go check on her, please. She slipped and fell on her own."
Wallace caught sight of the red marks bare on Ivy's skin, and something guilty flickered through his eyes and was gone. He yanked off his coat and draped it over her like a man covering evidence.
"Ivy, are you hurt? I'll take you to the hospital."
"I'm fine, my leg just aches a little. She looks worse off..."
He gave me one cold look, scooped Ivy up into his arms, and snapped down at me. "Don't think I didn't hear. Ivy came here out of kindness. When did you turn into someone this ungrateful?"
I lay on the floor, my eyelids ready to fall shut the next instant, and forced my trembling lips to explain. My thumb found the wedding band and turned it once around my finger, the only thing in me still moving.
"No. I didn't. She pushed—"
"Save the wounded act. Still trying to pin it on Ivy? You can't even lie properly. She's so frail she can't twist a bottle cap open. You think she could push you? And Ivy's kind-hearted, what reason would she ever have to push you? Dora, when did you become this person?"
With that he carried Ivy down the stairs, and as he passed me he kicked me aside like a stray dog the soldiers should have put down already.
"You like lying there, lie there a while longer. Just stay out of the way."
Ivy turned her head and gave me a smug little smile, the softness gone from her face the instant it had done its work, leaving only the eyes that had been cold underneath all along.
The car's engine roared away below the estate, and the dark closed in over my eyes.
