Part 2 — The Red Marks
I slowly turned toward Evelyn. For the first time in my thirty-four years, I looked at the woman who’d raised me and felt absolutely nothing—she looked like a complete, terrifying stranger.
I walked slowly past the ruined cake. Past the spilled, soapy water. Past the little rose petals Hannah must have arranged with so much excitement and love before it was all violently destroyed.
Then I dropped heavily to my knees right in the mess beside my wife.
With trembling fingers, I gently tilted Hannah’s chin up. The moment her face caught the light, a deep, burning rage slammed into my ribs. Thick, red friction marks wrapped around her delicate wrists.
“Who laid their hands on you, Hannah?” my voice shook, dropping into a dangerous, low register.
Nobody in the kitchen dared speak. Hannah tried frantically to look away from my eyes, her shoulders shaking as she attempted to pull her hands behind her back. “Thomas, please… don’t make a scene on your birthday. Just let me finish cleaning the stone.”
“Tell me what happened, Hannah.”
She broke down completely then, burying her face in my uniform jacket, sobbing out loud. “I just wanted to surprise you so much today, Thomas. I made the cake because… because I finally wanted to tell you the medical results today.”
My breathing stopped completely. “The baby? Is the baby okay?”
Hannah pressed one violently shaking hand over the center of her stomach. “I found out the gender at the clinic this morning.”
Before I could respond, our oldest housemaid stepped forward, wiping her face with her apron. “Sir, Madam Hannah didn’t drop that tray. Your mother read the words ‘Happy Birthday Daddy,’ screamed that a low-class girl didn’t deserve to inherit this family’s name, and smashed the glass stand right at her feet. Then she ordered her to get on her knees and clean up every crumb before you walked through the door.”
I looked back over my shoulder at Evelyn.
My mother rose slowly from the velvet sofa, smoothing down her designer blazer with complete, unbothered arrogance. “If that girl is going to live under my family’s roof, Thomas,” she said coldly, “she will learn to obey my house rules. She is sensitive, weak, and ungrateful.”
