Chapter Four: Old Menace   

Chapter Four: Old Menace   

 I finally pulled myself up from the dining chair.  

  Not dramatically. Not with any kind of purpose. Just the slow, heavy movement of a body that had been sitting in the same place for too long, holding too much, going nowhere. My legs felt heavy as I moved toward the stairs.    

I wasn't tiptoeing. I was simply moving slowly. Mentally drained in a way that sleep could not fix because the problem was not tiredness. The problem was that my husband had just kissed my forehead without guilt, like he hadn't just betrayed our marriage. Now he was back, walking past me like I was a door he was closing on his way out, before going upstairs to laugh with his mother while I sat at that dining table and let it happen.         

 I was halfway up the stairs when I heard it.  

Fast, heavy footsteps coming down the stairs toward me. I pressed myself to the side and Edward came wandering around the corner above me, his jacket half buttoned, tie hanging loose, moving like the building was on fire.  

  He almost ran straight past me.    

Then he grabbed the banister and stopped so suddenly that he nearly lost his footing, one foot catching the edge of a step, his whole body lurching forward before he steadied himself.   

He looked at me like he had just remembered I existed.   

"Daniel dropped my briefcase," he said, breathing hard. "Where is it?"   

I looked at his face.    

Open collar. Half buttoned jacket. The smell of a hurried shower and underneath it, something faint that was not his soap and not his cologne and not anything I recognised from our bathroom.  

My mouth did not open.  

I pointed at the sofa.  

He was already moving before my hand came back down. He grabbed the briefcase, checked his phone, and headed straight for the front door without breaking stride.  

No goodbye.  

No *I'll explain later.* Not even *sorry I have to rush.* Nothing.  

The door shut behind him and the house went quiet.  

I stood on the stairs and stared at the closed door for a long moment.  

*Real business this time,* I thought. *Or another hotel.*  

I turned and finished climbing.  

Margaret had left the room already when I got upstairs. I walked into the bedroom, closed the door, and fell face forward onto the bed.  

Not crying. Not thinking. Just flat, arms spread wide, my cheek against the duvet, staring sideways at the wall.  

I waited for the tears.  

Nothing came.  

My eyes were completely dry. Whatever tears I had left had already fallen on the floor at the bottom of those stairs at three in the morning. There was nothing left now. Just a hollow, still, almost frightening calm sitting in the middle of my chest where the panic used to be.  

I needed to figure out my life.  

The thought arrived clean and simple, no drama attached to it. Not *our* life. Not the one Edward and I had been building—or pretending to build, whatever word fit what we'd been doing. My life. The one that had been waiting underneath all of this the entire time.  

I was still turning that over when the scream split the air.    

"Isabella!!"  

I closed my eyes slowly.    

*She is still here.*  

Of course she was.  

I lay there and did not move and thought about the specific cruelty of this day. The 2 a.m. notification. The hotel. Sandra's smile. The forehead kiss. Edward running out the door with his briefcase. And now Margaret's voice cutting through the walls like she owned everything inside them, including me.  

*I thought old people were supposed to bring peace into a room,* I said inside my head, still staring at the wall. *Wisdom. Warmth. The kind of energy that makes younger people feel safe. Why is that crook of a mother-in-law the complete opposite of every single one of those things?*  

"Isabella!!"  

Louder this time. Closer.  

I sat up.  

I had barely gotten to my feet when the door flew open.  

No knock. There was never a knock.    

Margaret walked in like the door was an inconvenience she had decided to tolerate, eyes going straight to me, jaw set, the specific expression she wore when she had already decided before entering the room that I was wrong about something.  

"Did you not hear me calling you?"  

"No ma." I kept my voice flat and even. "I didn't hear you."  

She let out a short laugh. The humourless kind. "You didn't hear me, so now you are deaf on top of everything else." She said it slowly, like she was explaining something to someone who wasn't thinking clearly.  

I looked at her and said nothing.  

"Tell me something, Isabella." She took a step further into the room, arms folded, head tilted slightly, looking at me. "What exactly do you do in this house? Because I have been here since this morning and I am still trying to find the answer. You don't cook properly. You don't work. You just lazy around spending my son's money like that is a full-time occupation."  

She was watching my face while she said it. Carefully. Waiting for the flinch, the hot response, the crack she could slide a finger into and widen on my face.    

I was not going to give her today.   

I moved toward the door.    

She stepped into my path.    

I tried to go around her and her hand shot out fast, a hard shove against my shoulder that sent me stumbling sideways into the dresser. My hip hit the edge and I heard it before I could stop it, the tall ceramic vase on the corner of the dresser tipping, sliding, dropping.    

The crash it made against the floor was loud and very final.    

A shard caught my right leg on the way down, sending a sharp sting just above my ankle. I looked down at the thin line of red appearing against my skin and then looked up at Margaret.    

She glanced at the cut.   

Then she hissed. One short sound of complete and total indifference. Turned around and walked out.   

Her footsteps went down the hall without slowing.  

I stood in the middle of the broken pieces and the silence she left behind and felt something shift inside me. Not grief. Not even anger exactly. Something quieter than anger and much more dangerous.   

"Old menace," I said quietly to the empty room. "She got exactly the reaction she wanted."    

I found the first aid kit under the bathroom sink, sat on the edge of the bathtub and cleaned the cut slowly. It was small. It would heal. I pressed the cotton pad against it and held it there and stared at the bathroom tiles and thought about Edward.   

He was coming home tonight.   

I found myself strangely curious to see how he would react to what had happened between me and his mother.    

I gathered the shattered pieces from the floor and placed them somewhere safe, leaving them there for Edward to see.    

I decided to get something to eat because Edward wasn't worth starving myself over.   

I made something for myself, and somehow the house felt quieter, then I noticed Margaret had stepped out. I went to sleep. I didn't know how long I'd been asleep when the sound of car horns startled me awake.