“You’re fine,” her father called from the living room.
He didn’t even come into the hallway.
Emma felt her stomach drop harder than the fall itself.
“Dad,” she cried. “I’m bleeding.”
A pause.
Then:
“Khloe is already going through enough. Stop making everything worse.”
The sentence hurt more than the stairs.
Suddenly Emma wasn’t thirty-two anymore.
She was nine years old with a split lip after Khloe threw a brush at her.
Sixteen with her car vandalized while her parents demanded she apologize for upsetting her sister.
Twenty-two after Khloe stole thousands from her bank account and her parents called it “family business.”
Every memory stood in that hallway beside her.
Diane finally crouched near Emma.
Not close enough to touch the blood.
“Apologize to your sister,” she whispered.
Emma blinked in shock.
“What?”
“Apologize,” Diane repeated firmly. “For upsetting her.”
Emma stared at her mother in disbelief.
“I fell down the stairs.”