He Begged Me to Forgive Her, Then Lost Everything novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: On His Knees
Two days after she loses her baby on the Lowry House stairs, Willa's husband kneels on a hospital floor and begs her to forgive the woman who pushed her; she gives him back his ring and calls in the detective.
My husband got down on his knees on the floor of my own emergency room.
He did it in front of his mother, in front of the nurse charting by the door, in front of me.
Then he asked me to forgive the woman who had pushed me down the stairs.
"Willa, please."
Warner took my hand off the blanket and held it against his forehead.
His good gray suit was creased at the knees, and he had not shaved in two days.
I knew exactly how long, because I had been lying in observation room four for exactly that long.
I knew this room.
I had started IVs in this bed on a hundred other women.
Nobody had told me how thin the curtain is when you are the one behind it.
"She was drunk," he said. "She didn't mean it."
"I know she didn't mean it," said his mother.
Constance Lowry stood at the foot of my bed with her pearls on and her purse held in both hands.
She had not sat down since she walked in.
Lowrys did not sit in hospitals.
"A girl in a long gown on polished marble," Constance said. "These things happen, Willa."
"These things," I said.
"You slipped, dear. Everyone at the party saw you slip."
Forty people had been on that staircase at the Founders' Preview Dinner.
Forty people with champagne flutes had watched me go down eleven steps.
I had counted them from the bottom, looking up at the chandelier, with something warm already spreading under my dress.
I was fourteen weeks along.
Nobody at that party had known yet except Warner, and he had asked me to wait until after the toast.
Camille sat in the plastic visitor chair by the window, folded into her cream cashmere.
She was crying.
She cried beautifully, without any noise, one tear at a time.
Warner's father had hired her mother to keep the house when Camille was six.
She had grown up in the room over the kitchen.
She ate at the family table on holidays, and everyone called her the sister Warner never had.
"I would never hurt you," Camille whispered. "Willa, I swear I'd never."
I looked at her hands.
They were folded in her lap, very still.
I had felt those hands.
Two palms flat between my shoulder blades, and a breath of her gardenia perfume right behind my ear.
Then nothing under my feet.
"You were behind me," I said.
"I was trying to catch you."
"You said my name first. You said it softly, like you wanted me to turn around."
Camille's eyes went to Warner.
Not to me.
To him.
"She's confused," Constance said. "She hit her head. Warner, tell the doctor to keep her another night."
"I am the doctor's coworker," I said. "I know what a concussion looks like."
Hattie Lismore had stopped typing at the computer by the door.
She stood very straight in her avocado scrubs, with her jaw set.
She was the one who had called the police that night.
I had said one sentence to her before they sedated me.
She pushed me.
Warner lifted his face from my hand.
His eyes were wet, and I had loved those eyes for four years.
"If you say it was her, it goes to court," he said.
"Camille is not strong. She would not survive it."
"Mother has the Foundation, and the bank is watching, and the company has never been more exposed than this month."
"Willa, if this goes forward, I lose everything."
He did not say, I lost our baby.
He did not say, I'm sorry you fell.
I waited to see if he would get there.
He did not.
"Just tell them you slipped," he said. "Then we go home. I'll make this up to you for the rest of my life."
I looked at my own left hand in his.
Three years of a wedding band, a thin gold line, and a pale stripe under it where the sun had never reached.
I twisted it once, and it came off easily.
It had always been a little loose.
I turned his hand over and put the ring in his palm.
Then I folded his fingers shut around it, one at a time.
"Hattie," I said. "Please bring in the detective."
Constance's mouth went thin.
"Willa. Think of the family."
"I did," I said. "I counted them. There were forty people on those stairs, Constance, and I'm the only one who fell."
Warner stayed kneeling.
He looked down at the ring in his fist.
The curtain rattled on its rings.
A man in a brown coat stepped through with a notebook, and Hattie behind him with her chin up.
Camille rose from the chair.
She crossed to my bedside with her face wet and soft and sorry for the whole room.
She bent until her lips were against my ear.
"Ask him," she breathed, "why he can't afford to lose me."
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