Chapter 2 - Pick a Side
Daniel caught his mother before she reached the hallway.
“You’re not leaving.”
Margaret jerked her arm free. “Get your hands off me.”
“Emily is bleeding.”
“She hit me!”
Daniel stared at her as if he had never seen her before.
Behind him, Emily gripped the table while another wave of pain tightened across her lower stomach.
“Daniel.”
He turned immediately.
“I’m here.”
His hands shook as he called 911. He answered the dispatcher’s questions, found a clean towel, and knelt beside Emily.
Margaret kept talking.
“She has been unstable for weeks. I told you. I told you pregnancy was changing her.”
Emily closed her eyes.
Daniel looked over his shoulder.
“Stop.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“Stop talking.”
The command was so sharp that Margaret finally fell silent.
Sirens arrived six minutes later.
Two paramedics rushed in with equipment. One checked Emily’s blood pressure while the other asked about the bleeding, the cramps, the baby’s movement.
Then he noticed her face.
“How did you get the injury above your eye?”
Emily looked at Daniel.
He looked wrecked.
She had spent months protecting him from the truth because Margaret was his mother, because his father had died only two years earlier, because the family had already been torn apart by grief.
But protecting Daniel had nearly cost her child.
“My mother-in-law hit me,” Emily said.
The room changed.
The paramedic’s voice became calm and precise. “Did she strike your abdomen?”
“No. She shoved me into the table and slammed my head against it.”
Margaret stepped forward. “That is a lie.”
Daniel moved between them.
“Mom, enough.”
She stared at him.
“You believe her?”
“I believe what I’m looking at.”
“You saw her hit me.”
“I saw the end.”
Margaret’s eyes hardened. “Exactly.”
The paramedics helped Emily onto a stretcher.
Daniel grabbed his keys.
Margaret caught his sleeve.
“Before you go running after her, you should see what really happened.”
Daniel yanked free.
“What are you talking about?”
Margaret pulled out her phone.
On the screen was a video from the kitchen security camera.
Emily appeared in frame, shoving Margaret backward.
Then she slapped her.
The clip ended.
Daniel frowned. “Where is the beginning?”
“That is the beginning.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Margaret smiled with wounded innocence.
“Then prove it.”
A paramedic called from the doorway. “Sir, we’re leaving now.”
Daniel ran after the stretcher.
Margaret stood alone in the kitchen.
May you like
For the first time that day, she smiled.
Then she opened the camera app again and deleted a file labeled ORIGINAL - 12:41 PM.
