His footsteps sounded overhead before she finished saying his name.
Evan came down the staircase fast enough to miss the final two steps, catching himself on the banister before running into the living room. He had left his headset somewhere upstairs, and the expression on his face suggested that he had heard only enough of the commotion to know something serious had happened. He stopped when he saw the shattered glass, then followed Tessa’s gaze to the blood on his daughter’s forehead.
“What the hell happened?”
Tessa’s voice shook. “Your mother hit her.”
Evan stared at Lenora.
For the first time since Tessa had known him, he seemed unable to reconcile the woman in front of him with the role she occupied in his life. His mother was controlling, severe, and capable of holding a grudge over something as trivial as the wrong flowers at Christmas dinner, but he had always described her as disciplined rather than unstable. Now she stood in the middle of the bright room with broken glass at her feet while his three-year-old daughter bled in his wife’s arms.
He moved toward them.
“Mom, what are you doing?”
Lenora’s eyes went immediately to Maisie.
The question seemed to anger her because it required an explanation she believed should have been obvious. She dropped the broken neck of the bottle onto the sideboard, ignoring Tessa’s sharp intake of breath, and pointed at the child with a trembling finger.
“You don’t understand what you’ve brought into this house.”
“Stop.” Evan’s voice was low and strained. “Don’t say another word.”
Lenora looked at him as though he were the one behaving irrationally. Whatever fear had seized her when she found the birthmark was now wrapped inside a conviction strong enough to survive her son’s horror, her granddaughter’s crying, and the blood staining Tessa’s blouse. She took a step closer, stopping only when Tessa shifted Maisie farther away.
“You are the ones who cursed my family!” Lenora shouted. Her finger moved from Tessa to the little girl. “Your child was born a demon!”
The accusation reached Tessa through the rush of her own pulse. She had spent years tolerating Lenora’s contempt, her criticism of Tessa’s upbringing, her opinions about how Maisie should be dressed and disciplined, and the endless implication that marrying into the Hawthorne family required gratitude. None of that had prepared her for seeing genuine hatred directed at a bleeding three-year-old.