But the most horrifying part was her clothes. She was wearing nothing but a thin, torn silk nightgown, soaked through and clinging to her battered frame. And her hands—both of her small, delicate hands—were wrapped protectively over the distinct swell of her pregnant belly.
“Chloe!” I threw myself onto the freezing mud, crawling the last few feet, ignoring the sharp rocks tearing at my knees.
Her one good eye fluttered open. She looked at me, but there was no recognition at first—only raw, primal, animalistic fear. She flinched violently, raising a bruised arm to protect her face, a reflex that broke my heart into a million jagged pieces.
“It’s me, baby. It’s Mom,” I sobbed, hovering over her, utterly terrified to touch her and cause her more agony. “Oh, God. Chloe, who did this to you?”
Chloe let out a sound that was half-whimper, half-gasp. She leaned forward slightly, coughing, her body wracked with tremors. She reached out and gripped my wrist with a strength that terrified me.
“The silver,” Chloe whispered, her voice sounding like grinding glass.
“What?” I leaned my ear close to her trembling lips, shielding her face from the rain with my body.
“I… I didn’t polish the tea service right,” Chloe gasped, hot tears leaking from her swollen eyes, mixing with the rain. “Eleanor… she held me down by my hair. Liam… he used the golf club. I begged them to stop. I told them about the baby… I told them it was hurting the baby.”
The entire world around me went dead silent. The pouring rain, the wailing sirens, the shouting officers—it all faded into a deafening white noise of pure, distilled, nuclear rage.
Liam Sterling, the husband. Eleanor Sterling, the mother-in-law. They had beaten this girl—this kind, gentle, pregnant girl—because of a smudge on a silver teapot. And then, instead of calling an ambulance, they had driven her five miles down a desolate highway and dumped her at a bus stop in the freezing rain to miscarry and die.
“Paramedics!” I screamed, my voice cracking, turning toward the flashing lights. “Help her! She’s pregnant! Help my baby!”
As the medics rushed forward with the stretcher, lifting her broken body, Chloe’s grip on my wrist suddenly went completely slack. Her hand fell away, hitting the muddy concrete. Her eyes rolled back into her head.
