Chapter 2 - The Curtain Falls
Grandma’s reaction was instantaneous. The room had been alive with the bright, cheerful chatter of birthday well-wishes, the clinking of silverware, and the canned melodies of a jazz playlist drifting from the ceiling speakers. But the moment that faint scraping sound reached her ears, the elderly matriarch froze. She turned her head slowly toward the heavy velvet window treatment, her sharp, perceptive eyes narrowing beneath silver-rimmed glasses.
The air in the room still smelled heavily of sweet buttercream frosting from the multi-tiered cake resting on the mahogany dining table. Another camera flash went off near the mantle, illuminating the smiling faces of family members posing for a group portrait. But Grandma ignored the camera entirely. Her wrinkled hand slid along the edge of the velvet fabric, tracing the heavy folds until her fingers brushed against my hidden shoulder.
“Sweetheart?” she murmured, her voice laced with sudden, piercing concern.
Before I could even draw a breath to answer, Richard crossed the room with unnatural speed. His shoes clicked sharply against the hardwood, and his smile—fixed and plastic—strained at the edges as he intercepted his mother before she could pull the fabric back completely.
“Mom, leave it,” he said, his voice rising just a fraction too high, betraying the panic clawing at his throat. “She had an accident earlier. She’s exhausted. Let her sleep.”
Grandma didn’t back away. Her gaze remained fixed on the small gap where the curtain met the wall. “She’s not upstairs, Richard.”
“Of course she is—well, she came down, got confused, wandered back here,” he stumbled, tripping over his own frantic narrative. “You know how her memory and nerves have been acting up. Just... let it go.”
Grandma kept looking at me. Slowly, deliberately, she reached out and pulled the heavy velvet aside.
The blinding light of the living room seemed to rush in all at once, hitting my raw, swollen cheek and exposing the crude, amateur bandages wrapped tightly around my wrists. She saw the purple discoloration spreading across my skin. She saw how tightly I was clutching the broken doll, its single remaining arm dangling uselessly by a thread. The silence that fell over that immediate corner of the room was heavy enough to crush bone.
Then, ignoring my father entirely, Grandma slowly lowered her frail body until her knees hit the floor, bringing her face level with mine. Her eyes were impossibly soft, yet burned with an underlying steel that I had only ever seen directed at business rivals and dishonest contractors.
“Did you fall, darling?” she asked softly.
May you like
Before I could form the syllables, Richard lunged forward, his shadow falling darkly over both of us. “Of course she did. She’s always so clumsy, constantly tripping over her own feet. Come on, Mom, don’t make a scene in front of the guests.”
Grandma’s eyes never left mine. She didn’t look up at her son. She reached out a trembling, warm hand and gently touched the back of my uninjured hand. “I didn’t ask him,” she said clearly, her voice cutting through the ambient party noise like a scalpel. “I asked her.”
