Chapter 2 - The Wrong Story
The gardener’s name was Luis. Mara had spoken to him maybe six times in three years.
He was the first person who tried to save her life.
Luis came around the hedge, saw the collapsed awning, saw Mara’s blood, and froze.
“Jesus.”
“Call 911,” Mara said.
Her teeth were chattering, though the afternoon was warm.
Luis reached for his phone.
Daniel ran down the terrace steps.
“She fell,” he said. “She’s confused. She—she’s been depressed.”
Mara stared at him.
Depressed?
The word was so ordinary it made the whole thing worse.
“Don’t listen to him.”
Daniel crouched beside her. His hand hovered over her shoulder without touching.
“Mara, you’re in shock.”
“You cut the curtain.”
Luis stopped dialing for one second.
Daniel looked at him. “Call. Now.”
That was smart. Too smart. A man trying to stop an ambulance looked guilty. A man ordering one looked scared.
Teresa groaned from the lawn.
Luis called.
Evelyn came down more slowly, one hand gripping the rail. “She climbed over the balcony. Teresa tried to stop her.”
Mara laughed once. It sounded ugly.
“You stepped on Teresa’s foot.”
Evelyn’s eyes shifted to the blood beneath Mara’s dress.
Something like satisfaction crossed her face and vanished.
The ambulance arrived in seven minutes.
Seven minutes was enough time for Daniel to take Mara’s phone from beneath the balcony table and put it back into her purse.
Seven minutes was enough time for Evelyn to wipe the knife with a napkin.
Seven minutes was enough time for Mara to make her first mistake.
When the paramedic asked who should ride with her, Mara whispered, “My husband.”
Teresa’s eyes opened.
“No,” she said.
But Mara was crying now. “Please. Daniel, just… please.”
She hated herself for needing him. Hated the part of her that still remembered the man who held her hair during morning sickness, who built the crib badly and laughed when one side leaned.
Daniel climbed into the ambulance.
At St. Vincent’s, a doctor found placental bleeding but a fetal heartbeat.
“Your baby is alive,” Dr. Kim said. “But you’re not going home tonight.”
Mara sobbed into both hands.
Daniel sat beside the bed.
He cried too.
That frightened her more than the knife.
Later, while Mara drifted under pain medication, Daniel spoke quietly with a nurse in the hall.
He showed her a document on his phone.
Medical power of attorney.
Mara had signed it six months earlier with a stack of insurance papers.
She had not read it.
At 11:43 p.m., Dr. Kim returned with two security officers.
“Mara,” she said carefully, “your husband says you tried to harm yourself and your unborn child.”
Mara turned toward Daniel.
He could not meet her eyes.
May you like
Then one of the officers locked the hospital room door from the outside.
