Chapter 6
Falling doesn’t feel like flying.
It feels like the world has rejected your body.
There was no graceful slow motion, no clean cinematic silence. There was air tearing past my ears, screams bouncing off the old plaster walls, my own breath trapped somewhere in my chest. I remember trying to grab at nothing. I remember seeing the restored ceiling mural I had chosen—gold vines, painted clouds, tiny blue birds hidden in the corners.
I had spent two months finding the right artist for that ceiling.
Then the marble floor slammed into me.
Pain flashed white.
After that, darkness came in pieces.
A woman screaming.
Daniel saying my name again and again, each time more broken.
The smell of lemon polish and blood.
A paramedic’s face above mine.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to ask if my arm was supposed to feel like that, if my head was bleeding, if my mother was watching.
But all that came out was a sound I didn’t recognize.
Then the ambulance swallowed me.
The next time I opened my eyes, the ceiling was white and flat, not painted with birds. Fluorescent light buzzed overhead. My tongue tasted like metal. Something pinched the back of my hand.
Hospital.
The smell confirmed it—disinfectant, plastic tubing, stale coffee, fear.
“Liz?”
Daniel’s voice.
I turned my head and regretted it instantly. Pain bloomed from my skull down my spine. My right arm was wrapped and elevated. My ribs felt like someone had kicked them in while wearing steel-toed boots.
Daniel leaned over me, his eyes red, jaw unshaven.
“Hey,” he said, trying to smile and failing. “You’re awake.”
“What happened?” My voice sounded like sandpaper.
His face changed.
Behind him, Helen stood near the window with her arms folded. She looked older than she had that morning. Not weaker. Just carved deeper.
A man in a dark suit sat in the corner chair. He closed a small notebook when I looked at him.
“Mrs. Harrison,” he said. “I’m Detective Martin with Boston Police.”
My heart began to pound, which made every bruise announce itself.
“Police?”
Daniel took my left hand. “You fell from the second floor.”
“I didn’t fall.”
The words came out before I could think.
Helen’s eyes sharpened.
Detective Martin leaned forward. “What do you remember?”
I stared at the blanket over my legs. White cotton. Blue stripe. A tiny loose thread near my knee.
“My sister put up a slide,” I said slowly. “About my miscarriage. I tried to leave. My mother grabbed me. She pulled my hair.”
Daniel’s hand tightened.
“I was by the railing,” I continued. “She pushed me.”
The detective wrote something down.
My throat closed. “Where are they?”
“At the station,” Helen said. “All three.”
“All three?”
“Your mother. Your father. Rebecca.”
I swallowed. “Dad didn’t push me.”
“No,” Daniel said, voice low. “But he lied to the first officer. Said you slipped while hysterical.”
Of course he did.
A sad, familiar calm settled over me. My father had always been less dramatic than my mother, less openly cruel than Rebecca. But he had a special talent for standing in front of the truth until everyone got tired of looking for it.
“Michael?” I asked.
The room shifted.
Daniel glanced at Detective Martin.
“What?” I said.
The detective placed his notebook on his knee. “Michael Foster gave a statement.”
I tried to read his face. “About the fall?”
“Yes. And about other things.”
Helen came to my bedside. “Elizabeth, this may be hard.”
I almost laughed. My arm was broken, my head was split, and my mother had pushed me off a balcony. Hard had become a crowded room.
“Tell me.”
Detective Martin’s voice was careful. “Mr. Foster stated that he had been concerned for months about conversations between your sister and parents. He provided screenshots from Rebecca’s phone, pharmacy receipts, and notes he found in their home.”
The monitor beside me beeped faster.
“What kind of notes?”
Daniel looked like he wanted to stop this. Helen looked like she knew stopping it would only make it worse.
The detective continued. “There are indications they may have given you substances during your pregnancy without your knowledge.”
For a moment, language failed.
The words were simple. I understood each one. But together they formed a shape my mind refused to hold.
“What substances?”
“We’re still waiting on lab confirmation.”
“My pregnancy,” I whispered.
No one answered.
They didn’t have to.
The room shrank. The white ceiling lowered. My broken arm throbbed in rhythm with the monitor.
All those cups of tea.
All those visits where Rebecca insisted on helping in my kitchen.
All those days I had felt dizzy and blamed stress. All those nights I had lain in bed with cramps while my mother told me pregnancy was uncomfortable and I needed to stop calling the doctor for every little thing.
The baby I had lost.
The grief I had blamed myself for.
I turned my face toward Daniel. “Did they kill my baby?”
His eyes filled with tears.
Detective Martin said, “We don’t know yet.”
May you like
But Daniel’s silence told me what he feared.
And deep in the cold center of my body, beneath the pain and shock, something harder than grief began to wake up.
