"I dropped it because you screamed!" Clara cried out, her voice cracked and trembling with raw distress, the injustice of her terror fueling a brief, desperate spark of defiance.
Oliver towered over her, his chest heaving, his fists clenched as if ready to strike again. But before he could launch another assault, a calm, measured voice cut through the air from the doorway of the adjacent sitting room.
Margaret, Oliver’s mother, stood watching the entire violent spectacle with the detached indifference of a gallery critic observing a painting. In her sixties, with short, elegant grey hair and wearing a pristine beige dress that radiated old-money authority, she did not flinch, nor did she step forward to help the sobbing woman on the floor.