Before I could answer, Mark lunged close enough that his shadow fell across my hands.
“I said hang up.”
I pulled the phone tight against my chest.
My voice sounded thin when I spoke, but the words were clear.
“You said I was powerless.”
His mouth twitched.
“You were wrong,” I said.
Then the woman on the line asked for my address.
I said it.
Every number.
Every street word.
The town.
The ZIP code.
I said it like I was signing something official.
Mark’s face changed before I finished.
Some people think guilt looks like shame.
Sometimes it looks like calculation failing in real time.
He looked at the phone, then at the hallway, then at my belly.
“No,” he whispered.
His voice cracked on the second word.
“No… not them.”
He knew now.
Not my sister.
Not his mother.
Not some friend he could call dramatic.
Emergency services.
Police.
Medical.
People whose notes became reports.
People who asked questions he could not answer by raising his voice.
The house went strangely still.
Even the faucet seemed to stop dripping.
Then, faintly at first, sirens began to rise somewhere beyond the row of houses.
The sound came closer by degrees.
Mark backed into the chair he had knocked over, and it scraped across the tile.
I flinched so hard my stomach tightened again.
He saw it.
For the first time, I thought he might understand the baby was real to someone besides me.
Then he ruined it by opening his mouth.
“You’re trying to ruin my life,” he said.
Not our life.
Not the baby’s life.
His.
I pressed one hand over my stomach and forced myself to look at him.
“You did that yourself.”
The sirens got louder.
Blue and red light began to flicker against the front window, soft at first, then brighter.
Mark turned toward the hall.
The first pounding hit the front door so hard the frame shook.
“Police!” a voice shouted from outside.
Mark stared at the door like it had betrayed him.
The dispatcher’s voice came through the phone again, sharper now.
“Ma’am, do not get between him and the exit.
Stay low if you can. Help is at your door.”
Help is at your door.
I held on to that sentence.
Mark reached toward the lock with one trembling hand.
Then his phone buzzed on the counter.
The sound was small.
Almost ridiculous.
But it cut through the room.
He looked at it.
I looked at it.
The screen lit up.
Lena.
Another preview.
Did you do it yet?
I can’t wait forever.
