Chapter 4

Amira Osborne POV:

The world contracted to a tunnel of screaming sirens and frantic, incoherent prayers. I do not recall the drive, only the sensation of my own heart laboring to beat its way out of my ribs. I burst into my mother's apartment to find a scene from my most profound nightmares.

She was on the floor, her face a ghastly, bloodless white, her breaths so shallow as to be nearly imperceptible.

"Mom!" The scream was torn from the very fabric of my soul. I fell to my knees beside her, my hands hovering, terrified to touch her, to cause more harm. I fumbled for my telephone, my fingers clumsy and slick with sweat, and dialed for an ambulance.

"Half an hour," the dispatcher said. "It is rush hour, it is the best we can do."

Half an hour. My mother did not possess half an hour.

Neighbors began to gather in the hallway, their faces pale in the dim light. "What happened?" I pleaded, my eyes scanning their expressions for an answer.

An elderly woman, Mrs. Gable from the adjacent apartment, shifted uncomfortably. "That... other woman was here," she said, her voice low. "The one in the fine clothes. She was shouting at your mother about something. Then we heard a thud."

A red haze swam before my eyes. Francine.

As if summoned by the thought, she appeared at the end of the hall, emerging from the elevator. She was clad in a slinky, wholly inappropriate silk robe, her hair a perfect sculpture. She did not look surprised; she looked merely observant, like a naturalist studying an insect.

"Oh, dear," she said, her gaze flickering from my mother's still form to me. "What a terrible shame. She seemed so agitated when she saw me emerging from Carter's apartment this morning. I suppose the shock was simply too much for her constitution."

The implication was a poisoned dart. She was blaming this on my mother herself.

Just then, Carter's motorcar screeched to a halt outside. He ran into the building, his face a mask of worry until he saw Francine.

"Carter, help me," I sobbed, grabbing his arm, clinging to him as my last earthly hope. "We must get her to the hospital. The ambulance is too far away."

But Francine was already weaving her own narrative. "Carter, darling," she cooed, her voice trembling. "It was dreadful. I believe someone was attempting to break into my apartment. I was so frightened." She pointed a shaking finger up the stairs. "Would you mind just... coming up to check? For but a moment?"

He looked from Francine's performance to my mother lying on the floor. I saw the cold calculation in his eyes, the weighing of one thing against another. His future against my mother's life.

"Carter, please," I begged, my voice breaking. "She is dying."

He looked at me then, and the concern on his face curdled into a familiar, sharp-edged impatience. He shook my hand from his arm with a violent jerk. "For God's sake, Amira, can you not see that Francine is terrified? The ambulance is on its way. Cease being so selfish."

He turned his back on me, on my dying mother, and wrapped a comforting arm around Francine's shoulders, guiding her toward the stairs.

As the elevator doors slid shut, Francine glanced over his shoulder. In the brief gleam of the polished brass, I saw her expression of concern melt away like wax, revealing the hard, satisfied countenance beneath. She met my gaze, and her lips curved into a slow, deliberate smile.

It was the cruelest thing I had ever witnessed.

The doctor's words were like a length of thick, grey felt, stuffing my ears and deadening all other sound. The world continued to move, but I could no longer hear it; there was only a low, dull hum from within my own skull. I fell to my knees, the sound of my own desperate wails a distant, alien noise. I begged. I pleaded with the neighbors, with anyone who would listen. Finally, a kind man, a stranger, took pity. He helped me carry my mother to his car.

We reached the hospital, but we were too late.

The doctor's final pronouncement was a formality. "I am sorry, Ms. Osborne. We did everything we were able. Had she arrived but ten minutes sooner... perhaps."

Ten minutes.

Carter had chosen to investigate Francine's imaginary intruder over the ten minutes that could have saved my mother.

I stood in the sterile white corridor, the doctor's voice fading. I could not seem to draw a full breath. I watched them wheel her body away, concealed by a white sheet, and I could not bring myself to follow.

I stood there all night, leaning against a cold wall, as silent tears traced paths down my face. I felt not grief, not sadness, but a curious lightness, as if some vital organ had been surgically removed, leaving behind a sterile, hollow cavity.

As dawn broke, my telephone, which a nurse had kindly plugged in for me, lit up with a text message. It was from a number I did not recognize, but I knew the sender.

"Oops. Looks like your mommy couldn't handle the competition. Don't worry, I'll take good care of Carter for you. ;)"

A sound I had never before produced tore itself from my throat-a raw, guttural cry of pure agony and rage. I hurled the telephone against the plaster wall. It did not shatter; it burst, the screen cracking into a spiderweb of glass, the case splitting open and disgorging its small, metallic entrails across the floor.

I slid down the wall and crumpled, and something took root in that hollow space inside me. A hard, patient thing with the weight and chill of granite.