Maisie curled onto one side and whimpered for her mother.
Lenora’s face tightened.
“Go to hell, little brat.”
Outside, Tessa was already halfway up the front steps.
She had heard something break as she came through the entrance hall, followed by a cry that she recognized before her mind could supply the reason for it. The package she was carrying slipped from beneath her arm when she reached the living room doorway. For one disorienting second she took in the scene as a collection of details that refused to connect: sunlight across marble, Lenora standing beside the sofa, broken glass scattered near her shoes, and Maisie on the floor with one hand pressed against her head.
Then she saw the blood.
“Maisie!”
Her scream carried through the house. Tessa ran across the room, nearly slipping on the edge of the rug as Maisie tried to push herself upright, and dropped to her knees beside her. Blood had reached the child’s eyebrow, and although the wound itself was partly concealed by hair, Tessa could see enough to understand that the broken bottle and the injury belonged to the same moment. She touched Maisie’s face, checked her eyes, then pulled her daughter carefully against her chest while trying to keep her own hands steady.
“What happened? Baby, look at Mommy. Look at me.”
Maisie attempted to answer, but the words dissolved into crying. Tessa turned toward Lenora, expecting some explanation involving an accident, a fall, anything that could place the scene back inside the boundaries of ordinary life. Instead, she saw the jagged remainder of the bottle still hanging from Lenora’s hand.
Tessa rose with Maisie against her shoulder.
“What have you done to my child?!”
Lenora opened her mouth, but Tessa had already crossed the distance between them. She shifted Maisie securely against one arm and struck Lenora across the face with the other hand, the slap sharp enough to turn the older woman’s head. It was the first time Tessa had ever touched her mother-in-law in anger, and under any other circumstances the act might have shocked her into stillness, but her attention immediately returned to the blood in Maisie’s hair and the child’s weak grip around her neck.
“Don’t you come near her.”
Lenora slowly turned back. A red mark had appeared across her cheek, and for several seconds she seemed almost offended by the insult rather than disturbed by the injured child between them. Tessa backed away, one hand supporting the base of Maisie’s skull while she looked desperately toward the doorway and called for Evan.