Too much.
“Elena,” Michael said sharply. “Slow down. Breathe.”
But her mother couldn’t stop coughing.
The sound tore through the room, raw and wet and terrifying.
Daniel grabbed more tissues with shaking hands.
Clara stood frozen in the doorway while panic erupted around her.
Then Elena lifted her head weakly.
And looked directly at Clara.
The fear in those eyes destroyed something inside her.
Not because Elena was dying.
Because suddenly, horribly, she looked like Clara remembered herself looking at twelve years old.
Trapped.
The coughing finally eased.
Michael helped her lean back against the pillows while Daniel cleaned trembling fingers on a towel.
“We need the hospital,” Michael said quietly.
“No,” Elena rasped immediately.
“You’re bleeding.”
“No hospitals.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, I do.”
Her voice sharpened with sudden force, and for a brief instant Clara saw the woman she remembered beneath the illness.
Stubborn.
Proud.
Impossible.
Elena closed her eyes.
“I’m tired.”
Daniel looked helplessly toward his mother.
Clara stared at the blood on the cloth.
Then she heard herself ask the question she least wanted answered.
“What happened to her?”
Michael hesitated.
“Elena left the man she’d been living with about six months ago.”
Clara’s stomach tightened.
“Why?”
Neither man answered immediately.
And suddenly she knew.
“Oh God.”
Daniel looked away first.
Michael spoke carefully.
“He died.”
Clara frowned.
“How?”
Silence.
Then Daniel said quietly, “The police think she killed him.”
The room tilted.
For several seconds Clara genuinely thought she had misheard.
“What?”
“Elena says it was self-defense,” Michael said quickly. “There was evidence of abuse. Bruising. Witness reports. But the investigation never fully closed.”
Clara stared at her mother.
Elena kept her eyes shut.
“She disappeared before the case finished,” Michael continued. “No one knew where she went.”
