8. Winnie
WINNIE
Tabitha held the tea tin against her chest like an offering. The upstairs hallway smelled of old wood and the garlic Gilda was frying inside the apartment. I kept my hand on my purse, where my phone rested beside the safe key.
“Leave,” I said.
Tabitha’s eyes filled. “I understand why you’re angry.” The apartment door opened behind me. Gilda took in Tabitha, the tea, and my face.
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
Tabitha glanced at Gilda. “No problem. I wanted to apologize to Winnie. I brought the mint blend she likes. It’s safe during pregnancy.”
She emphasized safe as if she had been invited into my medical decisions. Gilda folded her arms. “You can apologize from there.”
Tabitha looked toward the stairwell, embarrassed by the lack of privacy. “I made Christmas too big. Knox trusted me with wonderful news, and I let my excitement take over. I never meant to hurt Winnie.”
“You framed my ultrasound,” I said.
“I thought the family would be happy.”
“You gave them my due date and symptoms.”
“Knox mentioned those details casually. I assumed you had agreed.”
“I told you in writing that I had not lent you my bracelet.”
Her chin quivered. “I brought it back.”
“You wore it after I told you to return it.”
Tabitha turned to Gilda. “This is what happens. I try to help, Winnie becomes upset, and every mistake changes shape until I look malicious.”
Gilda’s face remained still. “You should go.”
Tabitha’s sweetness tightened at the edges. “May I have one minute alone with my oldest friend?”
“No,” I said.
“Please, Win. I’m trying to save your marriage.”
Fury steadied me. “My marriage is not yours to save.”
“Knox is barely functioning.”
“Then stop functioning for him.”
The apartment timer rang. Gilda glanced toward the kitchen. Tabitha touched my sleeve. “One minute. I’ll leave after that.”
I stepped into the hall and pulled the door nearly closed behind me. I did not owe her privacy, but I wanted to hear what she said without an audience she needed to charm.
My phone came out of my purse. I opened the recording application, kept my thumb poised above the start control, and slid the phone into the outer pocket with the screen toward my palm, hidden beneath the flap.
“You have one minute,” I said.
Tabitha’s tears vanished. Her posture changed first. Her shoulders lowered. Her mouth curved with the small, private smile I had known since we were children.
“You finally did something dramatic,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thirty seconds.”
“He has been choosing me for years.”
I brushed my thumb across the hidden screen. The recording began. She glanced at the closed apartment door. “You gave him a marriage. I gave him peace. Which one do you think he’ll miss first?”
The cruelty was so direct that my anger briefly made room for grief.
“You wanted him before you introduced us.”
Her smile widened. “Of course I did.”
“Why introduce me?”
“Because I thought he would flirt with you. You were warm and harmless. Men like Knox enjoy that for an evening before they remember what their lives require.”
I kept the phone still. “He married me.”
“Yes. He made one impulsive choice, and I have spent six years making his actual life possible.”
“By lying to both of us.”
“By removing friction.” She leaned closer. Her perfume carried the same white-flower scent she wore at my wedding. “Look at what happened when I stopped protecting him from your feelings. You made him miserable over a chair.”
“You stole my pregnancy announcement.”
“He gave it to me.”
The sentence hurt because it was true. Tabitha noticed. Satisfaction warmed her face.
“He tells me everything,” she whispered. “He calls me when you are too busy. His mother trusts me. His staff trusts me. He put my name on the form because when something happens, he wants me.”
“Then why are you here?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“If you have everything,” I said, “why are you standing outside my sister’s apartment asking me to go home?”
“Because he has not accepted the obvious yet.”
“That he loves you?”
“That he chose the wrong woman.”
I glanced down once to make sure the phone was still recording. Tabitha followed my eyes. Her hand shot forward.
She seized my wrist and dragged the phone halfway out. I turned my body, striking the wall with one shoulder. The tea tin fell and burst open across the floor. Green leaves scattered between our shoes.
“Give me that,” she said.
“Let go.”
She clawed at the phone. Her thumbnail cut the side of my hand. The apartment door opened hard. Gilda caught Tabitha’s forearm and pulled her away from me. “Do not touch my sister.”
Tabitha stumbled into the opposite wall. Her face transformed before she regained her balance, rage becoming shock, then tears. My free hand went to my abdomen before I thought. No pain. No cramp. I counted three breaths and found each one steady.
“She recorded me without consent.”
Gilda picked up my phone. “You tried to take it from a pregnant woman.”
“She trapped me.”
“Leave before I call the police.”
Tabitha looked at me. Hatred replaced every soft expression she had ever worn before she turned away.
“Knox will see what you are,” she said.
“He already told the room what he thinks I am.” I took my phone from Gilda. “You can’t threaten me with Christmas.”
Tabitha stepped over the spilled tea and walked to the stairs. She climbed without hurrying, her heels loud on each wooden tread. I locked the apartment door behind her.
Gilda checked the peephole, then watched from the front window until Tabitha’s white car left the curb. Only after the taillights disappeared did she set the dead bolt.
“She knew the address,” I said.
“Marcella probably gave it to her.”
“Marcella doesn’t know. Gilda and Eamon own the building under their business name. Tabitha could find that in public records.”
Fear came colder than anger. She had searched for the place after I refused to provide an address.
Gilda called Eamon and told him to change the downstairs entry code before he came home. I emailed my attorney that the apartment address was compromised and asked him to remind Knox’s counsel that surprise contact violated my boundary.
“Do you want to move?” Gilda asked.
I considered it. Running would give Tabitha another task she could assign me.
“No. I want a camera on the downstairs door and written notice that she may not return.”
“Done.”
My sister did not tell me I was overreacting. Only after the calls were made did my hands begin shaking. Gilda guided me to the kitchen and examined the scratch beneath bright cabinet lights.
“Skin only,” she said. “Wash it.”
I obeyed. Anger drained slowly, leaving exhaustion and a painful sense of release.
“You were right,” Gilda said.
I looked at the soap running pink over my hand.
We saved the recording to three places. Gilda kept one copy. I sent another to the attorney who had advised me after Christmas, along with a short description of the struggle.
Before sending it, I listened once with headphones. The file began after Tabitha’s mask dropped. Marriage. Peace. Wrong woman. He wants me. I stopped the audio before the struggle.
Vindication should have felt powerful. Instead, I grieved the years she had trained me to mistrust my own memory and the four years Knox joined her.
They had used different methods. Tabitha knew exactly what she was doing.
Knox found her version easier. My mind had been the ground both of them crossed.
I renamed the file with the date and time. Exact facts deserved exact labels.
Gilda reheated dinner while I wrote a factual statement of the hallway contact. She did not ask whether the recording would save my marriage. She asked whether the scratch hurt and whether I wanted the hall light left on overnight.
“Leave it on,” I said.
Choosing caution without apologizing for it felt new. My attorney called within ten minutes.
“Do you want this sent to Mr. Ames or his counsel?” he asked.
I thought of Knox staring at the emergency form only after I placed it beside his plate. I thought of four years of facts he had treated as feelings.
“No,” I said. “Preserve it.”
“He may act faster if he hears it.”
“Then he would be acting because Tabitha admitted it.” My voice came out tired and certain. “I need to know what he does before she proves I deserved belief.”