Before I could process it, someone knocked on my door hard, three loud bangs that rattled the frame. I looked through the peephole and opened the door to find Jacob standing there looking disheveled, shirt wrinkled, hair uncombed, holding a folder like he was practicing what to say. Behind him stood Ellie with her arms crossed and sunglasses hiding her eyes.

The first words out of her mouth weren’t I’m sorry.They were: “You just ruined our lives.”I stepped aside silently and let them in. They sat on the couch. I stood.
The silence stretched too long, so I broke it.

“You hurt me,” I said quietly.Ellie rolled her eyes. “I tripped. It wasn’t my fault you’re so fragile.”Jacob cut in, “Ellie—”But she kept going. “She was in our kitchen, judging everything, telling me how to raise a child I haven’t even had yet. You think I’m just going to take that?”

I blinked once, then spoke with the calm of a woman who had been pushed too far.“You hit me, Ellie. And when I didn’t respond the way you expected, you both shut me out like I was disposable furniture.”
Jacob shifted, uncomfortable. “She said it was an accident,” he muttered.I raised my cast. The bruising was dark now, purple and blue, the swelling worse. “You didn’t even come downstairs, Jacob.”