"You sure this is your house? That your man is your man?"
"Moira, you have no idea. Lionel only married you because of me!"
I stared at her, frozen.
The rotting mess inside my abdomen seized again at her words, the pain so blinding I nearly blacked out.
"Want to know why you got expelled? Lionel was my witness. He told the university board he saw you and your professor together in that classroom with his own eyes!"
"He was afraid you'd come after me, so he married you to keep you under surveillance. Every move you made, controlled!"
"That love you were so proud of? It was just his entry ticket to stay in my good graces!"
"He also said someone like you doesn't deserve to be a doctor. That you were born to serve. So he had you wait on his parents hand and foot, cleaning up their filth..."
Rage swallowed every last scrap of reason. I grabbed a fistful of her hair and swung at her face.
But my body had nothing left.
Even with everything I had, my hand barely grazed her cheek.
She kept talking.
She told me about the baby I'd lost. How Lionel had slipped something into my soup.
She told me that in Lionel's mind, only Fay Simmons was fit to be the mother of his children.
I went still. My hand drifted down to the scar on my stomach.
She had been a girl. Five months along.
Lionel had been just as excited as I was. We'd set up the nursery together.
He'd even hand-washed the baby's clothes himself, one piece at a time.
The night I was rushed to the hospital, he held me and shook with sobs.
He was clearly devastated, but he forced himself to stay strong for me. "We'll have another baby. We will."
We clung to each other in that hospital room and wept.
Late into the night, in that dim ward, we suffered together.
Fay watched me break down, and the look on her face was pure, undisguised triumph.
She pulled my hand onto the swell of her belly and laughed, open and shameless.
"Everything you begged for and couldn't have, I got without even trying."
I crumpled to the floor, too weak to stand. I couldn't tell if the pain was my heart or my stomach.
Fay pressed the toe of her shoe into my kneecap and sneered.
"Moira, you're even more pathetic than I imagined."
I glared up at her. Slowly, the smugness in her eyes gave way to fear.
I lunged to my feet, locked my hand around her throat, and drove her backward until she was bent over the windowsill, half her body dangling outside.