Chapter 4: Her Mother's Hand

Four camera crews stood in the Draper Tower lobby with their lights already on.

In the middle of them stood my mother, in her good pearls, holding a tissue to her eye.

Daisy stood beside her in a red cardigan.

Red. I felt it in my stomach before I saw anything else.

She had chosen it. She knew exactly what it did to me.

Eli stopped at my shoulder.

"You don't have to go out there," he said quietly. "I can have them removed."

"No," I said. "She came to tell Boston I'm unwell. I'll let her finish."

I walked out of the elevator bank on my own.

My mother saw me first.

"There she is," she told the nearest camera, and her voice shook on cue. "My poor girl."

The reporters turned.

"Cora, sweetheart, we love you," my mother said. "Nobody is angry. Porter only wants you home and safe."

"Dr. Fairbank, is it true you're on medical leave?" a woman asked.

"No," I said.

My mother kept going over me.

"She hasn't been herself for months. Last night she attacked her own sister, in her own home. Look at Daisy's wrist."

Daisy held out her arm. A pink mark circled it.

She sniffled and let the cameras zoom in.

"I don't want anyone to be in trouble," Daisy said. "I just want my sister to get help."

I looked at the mark.

It was the shape of a hand, and it was the width of my mother's.

I pushed up my own sleeve.

The same print circled my wrist, darker, with four fingers across the bone.

"Last night my mother grabbed me like this," I said. "Right here. And she threw me against the bedpost."

I held it up to the lens.

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