Chapter 2

On Saturday afternoon, I was cutting fruit in the kitchen.

Sophie said she wanted to go upstairs for a picture book, and I told her to go ahead.

Less than a minute later, a heavy thud came from the staircase, followed by crying.

I dropped the knife and ran out.

She was lying at the landing. Her forehead had struck the edge of a step and turned red, and the skin on her left knee was scraped open.

She curled on the floor, sobbing so hard that she could barely breathe.

"Sophie, what happened?"

I crouched and tried to hold her.

She shoved my hand away and shrank back.

Then she raised her head toward the partly open front door, where a neighbor was passing in the hallway, and screamed with all her strength.

"Mom, stop pushing me. I don't want to go upstairs. Please don't push me again."

I froze.

I turned my head.

Mrs. Henson, a longtime resident from the fourth floor, stood in the hallway waiting for the elevator.

She held a bag of groceries, her mouth hanging open.

She saw the mark on Sophie's forehead and the blood on her knee.

Then she looked up at me.

I would remember that expression for the rest of my life.

"Nora, kids act up, but you don't push a child down the stairs."

"Mrs. Henson, I didn't push her. She fell by herself."

"She fell by herself and ended up like that? You heard what she just screamed."

I couldn't explain.

I didn't have a shred of evidence.

The living-room camera couldn't see the staircase.

I'd installed it to catch Sophie's lies in the living room. It never occurred to me she'd move the battlefield upstairs.

Sophie was still crying.

It was the kind of crying you could hear three floors down.

Neighbors began opening their doors.

Denise Alvarez from the third floor brought a bandage.

She looked at Sophie's injuries, then at me, and handed the bandage straight to Sophie.

"Don't cry, sweetheart. I'll put this on for you."

"Thank you." Sophie sniffled pitifully. "Mom didn't mean to do it. Mom didn't mean to..."

By that evening, the entire building knew.

Someone posted anonymously in the Orchard Heights residents' group: "The mother on the sixth floor pushed her child down the stairs. How can anyone be that cruel?"

I didn't answer in the group.

Colin came home looking sick.

He'd run into Mrs. Henson in the elevator, and she'd talked at him for five straight minutes.

"Nora, what happened?"

"She fell by herself."

"She says you pushed her."

"You don't believe me?"

He didn't answer.

The whole complex turned on me.

Mrs. Henson told everyone I was abusing my child.

Even Walt, who ran the fruit stand at the Orchard Heights gate, looked at me differently.

I bought more cameras and put them in every corner of the condo.

The cut on Sophie's forehead scabbed over.

Every day, she touched it while looking in the mirror.

Like a general reviewing her spoils.

I didn't confront her.

Confronting her would take evidence.

This time I had nothing from the staircase.

Next time I would.