Every act of survival had been disguised as something small.
The sound of tires on gravel broke through the room.
Lena ran.
She reached the front hall just as the estate doors opened.
Clara entered with Decker beside her.
Her left hand clutched her handbag.
Her right arm was held stiffly against her body.
The swelling around her eye looked worse in daylight.
But she was walking.
“Mama.”
Clara’s face crumpled.
Lena crossed the marble floor and wrapped her arms around her carefully.
“I’m sorry,” Clara whispered.
Lena pulled back.
“For what?”
“For this.
For you getting dragged into this.
For Mr.
Malone seeing—”
“No.” Lena’s voice broke.
“Stop apologizing.”
Behind them, Rhett had entered the hall.
Clara saw him and immediately straightened despite the pain.
“Mr.
Malone, I am so sorry I couldn’t come in.
I can work tomorrow.
I just need tonight and—”
“You are not working tomorrow.”
Clara went white.
Lena turned sharply toward him.
Rhett seemed to realize exactly how his words had sounded.
“Because you are injured,” he added.
“Not because you are fired.”
Clara blinked.
“You still have your job.
You also have paid medical leave you should have been using for years.”
“My husband said—”
“I’m not discussing your employment with your husband.”
Something in Clara’s face flickered.
It was not relief yet.
It was confusion.
As if she had lived so long under one man’s rules that hearing a different answer sounded like a foreign language.
Rhett looked toward Decker.
“Doctor?”
“On the way.”
Clara stiffened.
“I don’t need a doctor.”
Lena almost laughed from sheer exhaustion.
“You can’t lift your arm.”
“It’s only bruised.”
“You said that when I was twelve and you couldn’t turn your neck for three days.”
The room went quiet.
Clara stared at her daughter.
Rhett said nothing.
He did not need to.
The sentence had revealed more than either woman intended.
