There was a faint mark there, barely darker than the surrounding skin.
Tessa had noticed it when Maisie was an infant and had once asked the pediatrician about it. The doctor had dismissed it as a harmless birthmark, and because it was almost always covered by Maisie’s hair, Tessa had stopped thinking about it years ago. Lenora apparently had not.
Her fingers went slack against the child’s cheek. For a moment she simply stared, her face draining of color until the expensive makeup along her jaw seemed suddenly too warm for her skin. She looked from the birthmark to the open wooden box, then back again, following some private connection that the crying child could not understand.
“It came back,” Lenora whispered.
Maisie tried to pull away. “Grandma, you’re hurting me.”
Lenora released her so abruptly that the child stumbled against the edge of the rug. Maisie began backing toward the hallway, calling for her mother between sobs, while Lenora remained beside the cabinet with one hand pressed against her mouth. The sensible response would have been to comfort the child, close the box, and wait for Tessa to return, but whatever Lenora saw in the room no longer belonged entirely to the present. Her eyes kept returning to the mark beneath Maisie’s ear, and the fear in them hardened into something that looked increasingly like resolve.
A decorative drinks tray stood on the sideboard behind her. Lenora reached toward it without looking and closed her hand around the neck of a heavy glass bottle.
Maisie saw the movement and began crying louder.
“I want Mommy.”
Lenora stepped toward her.
The child turned.
The bottle came down.
The impact was followed by a sharp crack, and glass broke across the marble with a sound that carried through the high-ceilinged room. Maisie collapsed beside the edge of the rug, stunned into silence for an instant before a thin, frightened cry escaped her. Part of the bottle remained in Lenora’s hand while fragments slid over the floor and settled beneath the table, catching the sunlight in bright, harmless-looking pieces that did not match what had just happened.
A narrow line of blood appeared beneath Maisie’s hair.
It moved slowly at first, following the curve above her ear before reaching her temple. The sight of it seemed to bring Lenora back into her own body, although not in the way remorse should have. She stood over the child breathing hard, staring at the blood and then at the birthmark hidden beneath the tangled strands of hair as if the injury had confirmed something she had been trying to deny.