“Don’t you dare delete anything,” Dad said.
The woman holding the phone froze.
For the first time since I had entered the house, nobody laughed.
Dad stood just inside the front hall, his coat still buttoned, staring at the scene as if his mind were refusing to fit the pieces together.
Gravy dripped from my hair onto the floor.
My jeans were soaked.
Blood spread beneath me in a dark stain I could not stop looking at.
Then his training as a father overpowered his shock.
He crossed the hall in three strides and dropped beside me.
“Don’t move,” he said, his voice suddenly quiet.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“The baby,” I whispered.
“Dad, she’s not moving.”
His jaw tightened.
He put the phone on speaker while the emergency dispatcher answered, then carefully took my hand without trying to lift me.
Behind him, someone shifted toward the living room.
Dad looked up.
“Nobody leaves.”
Alexis let out a sharp laugh, but it sounded thin now.
“Dad, you’re being ridiculous.
She slipped.”
His eyes moved to the antique gravy boat still hanging from her hand.
“Put that down.”
Alexis obeyed.
The dispatcher asked what had happened.
Dad looked at me.
I tried to speak, but my teeth were chattering.
“She fell down the stairs,” Mom said quickly from above us.
Dad’s face turned toward her.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Mom folded her arms.
“She came into the middle of Alexis’s reunion and caused a scene.
There was an accident.”
The woman in red stared at the floor.
The blonde beside her stopped smiling completely.
Dad looked at the gravy in my hair, then at the staircase, then at the guests.
“Did someone pour that on her?”
Silence.
Alexis finally spoke.
“It was gravy, Dad.
Not acid.
She’s fine.”
Something in his expression hardened.
“She’s eight months pregnant, bleeding at the bottom of my stairs, and you’re telling me she’s fine?”
No one answered.
The dispatcher told him paramedics were on the way.
I squeezed Dad’s hand.
“Hannah isn’t moving.”
He looked back down at me, and for the first time I saw fear in his eyes.
“They’re coming,” he said.
“Stay with me.”
Minutes later, sirens cut through the neighborhood.
The front door opened again, this time to two paramedics carrying equipment.
The party scattered instinctively to make room.
Wine glasses appeared on tables.
Phones disappeared into purses.
