A New Normal - Chapter 5

The morning light came through the curtains of the Von Hasberg manor.

Adrianna laid still beneath the covers of her bed, hiding from the warmth that came through the silk curtains. The room was quiet. The manor was always quiet. She lay with her eyes open and listened for something familiar and heard only the clock on the mantel and the distant footsteps of a household beginning its day without her.

Adrianna buried her head into her pillow as two knocks hit against her door. Ms. Rosemary let herself in after a brief pause, making her way to the curtains. 

“Miss Tessari, the sun is shining rather brightly today, why not let it shine on you as well.” She drew the curtains. 

Ms. Rosemary was a careful woman in her middle forties, with brunette hair pinned beneath a lace cap and pale hands that had seen a lifetime of work. She carried a folded towel over one arm "Good morning, Miss Tessari," she said.

"Good morning, Ms. Rosemary," Adrianna replied. Her voice was thick with sleep and muffled as she spoke through her pillow. Her accent had gotten much better over the years she has resided in the Valdren Kingdom. The language was always a pain for her as it required vowels and vocal sounds she never needed to use back in Serathine. 

Ms. Rosemary set the towel on the foot of the bed and placed her hands on her hips, looking down at her with the patient disapproval of a woman who had fought this same battle every morning and had never once lost.

"Come now, Miss Tessari," she said, pulling the covers back before Adrianna could protest. The cool air rushed over her nightgown and she flinched against it, curling inward. "We'll get you washed up before the Madam comes down for breakfast."

Ms. Rosemary lifted upright. Ms. Rosemary's hands were gentle beneath her arms, careful around the stumps where the skin tightened in the cold. She eased the nightgown over Adrianna's head, working the fabric past the scarred tissue with a tenderness that had taken months to learn. Adrianna sat on the edge of the bed, bare, her dark skin prickling in the morning chill. Her hair fell around her shoulders and down her back in thick black curls that had spent the night tangling themselves into a shape Ms. Rosemary would spend the better part of twenty minutes undoing.

"Let's get you ready for the day Miss," Ms. Rosemary said, wrapping the towel around her shoulders. She guided Adrianna into her wheelchair that sat in the corner of her room. 

Adrianna hated the chair. She could walk — her legs worked fine, her balance was steady, she had crossed the corridor to the washroom on her own feet a hundred times when no one was watching. But her aunt insisted. The chair was safer, the chair was easier, the chair meant Ms. Rosemary could move her through the house without worrying about stairs or thresholds or the slippery tile in the front hall. 

The chair also meant that when visitors came, when her aunt’s friends gathered in the parlor room with their teacups and their charity talk, every face in the room did the same thing — the softening, the slight drop of the eyes, the careful rearrangement of expression into something that was supposed to look like warmth but looked like pity, always pity, as though she were a mistake and not a person sitting in their midst. She knew what she was missing. She did not need their faces to remind her. 

The corridor stretched ahead of them, wide and polished and lined with paintings Adrianna had stopped looking at months ago. Landscapes of Valdren valleys she had never visited. A portrait of her aunt's late husband above the staircase landing, a man she had never met whose name she carried through this house every day. Ms. Rosemary wheeled her past it all in silence, and Adrianna watched the floor move beneath her and thought about what she would be doing if she were home.

Morning chores. Feeding the chickens. Helping her mother knead the bread while her sister swept the front step and complained about it, just as she complained about everything. Her father would already be in the field by now, or at the neighbour's barn helping with something he wouldn't be paid for, because her father always helped people without being asked and without expecting anything in return. Her mother would be singing in the kitchen, it would have been a Serathine song. 

None of them were singing anymore.

The washroom was tiled in white and green, with a copper tub set against the far wall and a pyrethium heating unit beneath it. Ms. Rosemary turned the valve and the element glowed orange behind its grate. While the water heated, she helped Adrianna out of the nightgown, easing the fabric over the stumps. Adrianna caught her own reflection in the small mirror above the sink. Brown skin. Sharp collarbones. The scars where her arms ended, faded now from angry red to something darker, smoother. She looked at them and looked away. She did this every morning. As though she kept expecting them to have grown back overnight and was freshly disappointed each time they hadn't.

"Madam Von Hasberg asked me to remind you," Ms. Rosemary said, testing the water against her wrist, "that she has guests arriving at noon today. Mrs. Belleford and Mrs. Ashdown, and I believe Mrs. Tate as well. She would very much like you to join them."

"I'm sure she would," Adrianna said.

"She asked me to mention," Ms. Rosemary continued carefully, lowering Adrianna into the tub with one hand behind her back and the other beneath her knees, "that Mrs. Belleford's daughter will be attending. She's about your age. Your aunt thought you might enjoy the company."

"She thought I might behave myself, you mean," Adrianna said.

Ms. Rosemary did not answer.

The water rose around her body and the warmth reached her bones. Adrianna let her head fall back against the rim of the tub and stared at the ceiling. She knew what these gatherings looked like. She had been to enough of them. The women with their pitiful smiles and their pitiful questions. They would ask how she was settling in. They would tell her she was brave. One of them would mention the Confederation and another would shake her head and a third would touch her own arm without realising she was staring at Adrianna. They thought she couldn't see them looking at her sleeves. She could always see them looking.

They talked about her often. She had heard it once through a doorway she wasn't supposed to be near. Mrs. Belleford's voice, low and confident, saying something about her aunt's charity and what a burden it must be and how well Eloise was handling it. The word burden had stayed with Adrianna for weeks. She had turned it over in her mind, held it up against every kind look and gentle word her aunt's friends had ever given her and found that it fit perfectly behind each one. They smiled at her over tea and they called her a burden when the door was closed. She had not been surprised. She had been Serathine long enough to know that people who whispered were more dangerous than people who shouted, and the women of Alderside never shouted.

Ms. Rosemary knelt beside the tub and began to wash her. The cloth moved over Adrianna's shoulders, down her back. Adrianna watched the older woman's hands work over her skin and tried to remember the last time she had washed herself. The memory was there, somewhere before the bombing, somewhere in her old house, but the details had gone soft. She remembered her mother’s hands. 

Her mother's hands had been calloused from the garden and rough from kneading bread. "Lean forward for me, Miss Tessari," Ms. Rosemary said, and Adrianna leaned, and the cloth moved down her spine, and outside the washroom window a bird was singing in the garden.

She listened to it. It was the closest sound to home she had heard all morning.

Ms. Rosemary washed her hair last, pouring water from a copper jug over her head and working it through the curls with her fingers. Adrianna's hair was thick, black and enormous, it coiled and twisted and expanded in the humidity of the washroom until it framed her face like a dark cloud. Her aunt called it unmanageable. Ms. Rosemary called it spirited, which Adrianna suspected was the word she used for all the parts of Adrianna that refused to be Valdren. Her hair was spirited. Her voice was spirited. Her habit of saying exactly what she thought at exactly the moment she thought it was spirited. Her aunt used a different word for that one. Difficult.

Adrianna was not difficult. She was only Serathine, and the difference between the two was something this city had never learned to tell apart.

Ms. Rosemary worked the tangles out from the ends, moving upward, patient and thorough. She had learned how to do this over the years. In the beginning she had started from the roots and Adrianna had yelped and twisted away and Ms. Rosemary had apologised and tried again and gotten it wrong again, and eventually Adrianna had told her 'starts from the bottom, works up, fingers first then comb' because that was how her mother had done it on the front step every evening while the sun went down and the neighbours walked past and her mother shouted greetings across the lane without breaking rhythm.

Adrianna closed her eyes as Ms. Rosemary combed through her hair. She imagined her mother's hands in her hair, pulling through the knots. Her sister sitting on the step below, already brushed, already braided, smugly watching Adrianna suffer. Beauty is suffering, little one, her mother would say, and pull harder, and Adrianna would squirm and her sister would laugh.

Ms. Rosemary helped her out of the tub and dried her. She wheeled her back to the bedroom, where the bed had been made by another maid, the covers pulled tight. Mr. Rosemary began to dress Adrianna, with her fingers moving through the laces and buttons of corsets without hesitation. 

Then the dress — a deep green wool with long sleeves and a high collar. Adrianna watched in the vanity mirror as it was pulled over her head. The sleeves fell past where her arms ended, long enough to drape, long enough to hide. From across a room you might not notice. Up close, there was nothing to mistake.

Ms. Rosemary unwrapped the towel from her hair and the heavy and damp curls fell around her face. She began to work through them with a wide-toothed comb, sectioning and pinning, gathering and smoothing. Adrianna watched in the mirror. The face looking back had her mother's eyes. Her father's jaw. Her sister's mouth.

"Miss Tessari," Ms. Rosemary said gently, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "Your aunt only wants what's best for you. She worries."

"If she truly wanted the best for me, then I would not be here in this manor or this blasted kingdom," Adrianna begrudgingly said.

Ms. Rosemary did not respond.Adrianna could see the pained look in her eyes. She wondered if Ms. Rosemary was like the Alderside women where she too pitied her. 

Adrianna looked at herself in the mirror. She did not recognise the woman looking back.

"Shall I take you down for breakfast?" Ms. Rosemary asked.

"Yes, please," Adrianna said, looking at the floor with a furled brow.

The dining room had always seemed too large for how small the amount of people lived here. Every morning the table was set as though a party of eight were to be expected, polished silverware sat neatly next to glasses no one had asked for. Adrianna's seat was set to the right of her aunt's chair, close enough that Eloise could reach her plate without standing. 

Eloise Von Hasberg was already seated when Ms. Rosemary wheeled Adrianna to her place. She was a tall woman with sharp cheekbones and grey-streaked hair swept back from her face in a style that had not changed in the twenty years since she had left the Confederation. Her posture was perfect. Her dress was dark blue, it’s high-collared gave her a look that Adrianna would have called superiority. She wore a thin gold chain with a locket she never opened, and her hands, when they were not occupied, rested one on top of the other on the table's edge with the stillness Adrianna associated with everyone in this country.

"Good morning, darling," Eloise said, smiling as Adrianna was positioned at the table. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of Adrianna's head. "Did you sleep well?"

"Well enough," Adrianna said.

"You look tired though," Eloise said, studying her face. She reached for the teapot and poured Adrianna's cup before pouring her own, then began cutting the toast on Adrianna's plate into small, even squares. She did this without pausing in her conversation and without looking at the knife. "Ms. Rosemary mentioned you were up late again. I do wish you would try to keep a more regular schedule, darling. The body needs its rest."

"My body rests plenty, auntie," Adrianna said. "It doesn't have much else to do."

Eloise's knife paused for half a second, then resumed. "I've arranged the parlour for this afternoon," she said. "Mrs. Belleford and Mrs. Ashdown will be arriving at noon, and Mrs. Tate shortly after. Mrs. Belleford is bringing her daughter Charlotte. She's just returned from boarding school in Corvane. Lovely girl. I think you'll get along wonderfully."

"Auntie, you think everyone is lovely," Adrianna said, allowing herself a small smirk.

"Because I choose to see the best in people," Eloise replied. She placed a square of toast on Adrianna's fork and held it to her mouth. Adrianna ate it. The toast was dry and the butter was unsalted yet she did not have the courage to tell her aunt that the food she had prepared for her was not to her liking. 

"I'd like you to make an effort today," Eloise continued. "Charlotte is well-travelled and very bright, and I think having a friend your own age would do you a world of good. Someone to talk to." She poured more tea. "And I would appreciate it if you could try, just for one afternoon, not to say anything that might — how shall I put this—"

"Embarrass you," Adrianna said.

"I was going to say startle them," Eloise said gently. "You have a way of being very direct, darling, and I adore that about you, but some of these women are not accustomed to it. Things are rather different here in Valdren than Serathine."

Adrianna thought again of what Mrs. Belleford had said through the doorway.

Burden.

She wondered whether Eloise knew. After a moment, she decided she did not. Eloise believed in her friends as completely as she believed in the kingdom and the city—not because either had earned her faith, but because it had never occurred to her that they might not deserve it.

"I'll be good," Adrianna said.

Eloise smiled and touched her cheek. "That's my girl."

Adrianna finished her breakfast in silence. The eggs were poached, served in a porcelain cup with a tiny spoon that Ms. Rosemary used to feed her. Each bite arrived on someone else's hand, and Adrianna kept her eyes on the window throughout because it was easier when she did not see the spoon coming. 

The guests arrived at twelve. Adrianna heard them from her room, the front door, the maid taking coats, voices rising through the house. She sat in her wheelchair by the window and waited until Ms. Rosemary came to collect her.

The parlour was Eloise's finest room, the walls were lined in silk wallpaper that was a pale gold, a fireplace was framed in white marble, chairs upholstered in cream around a low table set with tea and cakes. Mrs. Belleford sat nearest the fire, broad and auburn-haired. Mrs. Ashdown was beside her. Mrs. Tate sat apart with her hands folded. And beside Mrs. Belleford, in a chair angled toward the fire, sat Charlotte Belleford.

She was perhaps twenty, fair-haired, wearing a dove-grey dress with pearl buttons. Her posture was the kind that took years and money to produce. She looked up when Ms. Rosemary wheeled Adrianna into the room, and her eyes moved from Adrianna's face to the wheelchair to the empty sleeves and back to Adrianna's face in a single pass. Then she smiled, wide and warm and perfectly timed.

"Adrianna Trellis," Charlotte said, rising from her chair and crossing the room as though they were old friends reuniting. "I've heard so much about you. It is such a pleasure."

She reached for Adrianna's hand without thinking, then caught herself, her fingers hovering in the air above the empty sleeve for a fraction of a second before she redirected them to Adrianna's shoulder, giving it a squeeze that was meant to be familiar.

"Thank you," Adrianna said. "It's nice to meet you, Charlotte."

"Please, sit with me," Charlotte said, gesturing toward the sofa as though the room belonged to her. "I've just been telling your aunt about Corvane. Have you ever been?"

"I haven't," Adrianna said.

"Oh, you must. The architecture alone — and the harbour at sunset, honestly, there is nothing like it. The officers' ball was held at the Royal Maritime Hall, right on the water, and the whole building was lit with gas chandeliers. Can you imagine?"

Adrianna could not imagine. She had grown up in a village where the fanciest building was the communal oven, and the closest thing to a ball was the harvest festival where her father danced to the harvest gods. 

"That sounds wonderful," Adrianna said.

The tea was served. Eloise poured for Adrianna and helped her drink, holding the cup to her lips while continuing a conversation with Mrs. Ashdown about the reconstruction committee. The other women talked. Adrianna listened. Charlotte sat beside her and kept her body angled toward Adrianna with the attentive posture of someone tending to a patient in a ward.

After an hour, Eloise suggested the garden. The weather had cleared and the groundskeeper had set chairs on the terrace. Mrs. Belleford and Mrs. Ashdown rose. Mrs. Tate followed. Eloise looked at Adrianna.

"Would you like to come outside, darling?"

"The terrace steps," Adrianna said. The wheelchair would not clear them without being lifted.

"I'll stay with her," Charlotte offered. She placed her hand on the back of Adrianna's chair. "We're getting along so well. Aren't we, Adrianna?"

Eloise hesitated. She looked at Adrianna, searching her face for permission or protest, and Adrianna gave her neither because she had promised to be good.

"All right," Eloise said. "We won't be long."

The parlour emptied as the sound of the garden door closing echoed. The voices faded into the afternoon, and then it was just the two of them — Adrianna in her wheelchair and Charlotte Belleford on the cream sofa with her legs crossed and her teacup balanced on her knee.

The room was different with just the two of them in it. Charlotte's smile had not changed but the effort behind it had eased, with the audience gone, and what remained was a girl studying another girl with open curiosity.

"So," Charlotte said, setting her cup on the table. "What do you do all day?"

"What do you mean?" Adrianna asked.

"Here. In this house. What do you do with your time? Do you read? Do you take lessons? Do you go out?"

"I read sometimes," Adrianna said. "Ms. Rosemary read me an interesting book called Eternal Beauty."

Charlotte nodded slowly, as though absorbing something that confirmed what she had already suspected. "And before all this? Before you came here. What was your life like? You’re from the Confederation, right?"

Adrianna was quiet for a moment. "Yes, I was. It was…different, to say the least," she said.

"I imagine so." Charlotte smoothed a crease in her dress. "Mother says the Confederation is mostly farming villages. She says the people are very warm, very hospitable. She visited once, years ago, on holiday. She said the food was lovely but the roads were dreadful." She laughed lightly. "I suppose it must have been a rather large adjustment, coming here."

"It was," Adrianna said.

"But you're so lucky to have your aunt," Charlotte continued. "I mean, truly. Not everyone has family who can provide like this. This house, the staff, the medical care — Aunt Eloise has given you a real chance at a proper life. You must be so grateful."

Grateful.

 It sat beside brave and burden and remarkable, all of them in a row, all of them words that people used when they did not know how to see her as anything other than a problem someone else had generously agreed to solve.

"I am," Adrianna said carefully.

"It's just so inspiring," Charlotte said. She leaned forward, her voice dropping slowly, as though she were sharing a secret between friends. "You sitting here, managing so well, with everything that's happened to you. I couldn't do it. I honestly couldn't. If I had lost my —" She stopped herself. Her eyes dipped to the sleeves again and came back. "Well. I just think you're terribly strong."

"I wouldn’t call myself strong," Adrianna said. "This is just what happened to me."

"But that's what makes it so admirable," Charlotte said, as though Adrianna had proven her point. "The way you carry on. Mother was saying just the other day — she was saying to Mrs. Ashdown, actually — that it must take such courage to face each morning knowing that you can't..." She trailed off again, gesturing with her teacup at the empty sleeves, at the wheelchair, at Adrianna herself. "Well. Knowing what you know."

Adrianna looked at Charlotte Belleford. She looked at the pearl buttons and the dove-grey dress and the fair hair that someone had pinned that morning with fingers that worked. She looked at the hand holding the teacup — the fingers curled around the handle, the wrist turning, the casual thoughtless miracle of actually holding something, of lifting it, of bringing it to her lips and drinking by herself. Charlotte did this without noticing. She held her cup and drank her tea, gesturing with her free hand and none of it seemed to cross her a single thought, and she sat across from a girl who would have traded everything in this room for five minutes with working fingers and told her she was admirable.

"What is it that your mother says about me?" Adrianna asked. "When I'm not in the room."

Charlotte's smile faltered. "I'm sorry?"

"You said she was saying something to Mrs. Ashdown. About me. What does she say when I'm not here to hear it?"

Charlotte set her teacup on the table with a porcelain click. The warmth in her expression cooled by several degrees. "She says very kind things, Adrianna. She says your aunt is a saint."

"A saint," Adrianna repeated.

"For taking you in," Charlotte said. "Yes."

The words sat between them. Charlotte held Adrianna's gaze without flinching, and for the first time the performance was gone entirely and what Adrianna saw was simple and clear: a girl who believed that Adrianna was a charity case, that she was some kind of wounded pup that was taken in. 

"What do you think I am?" Adrianna asked flatly.

Charlotte laughed softly, clearly trying to dissolve the tension. "I think you're a very brave—"

Adrianna scoffed. The sound came out louder than she intended and Charlotte stopped mid-sentence. 

"Brave," Adrianna repeated, and laughed. "Everyone in this city calls me brave. Your mother calls me brave. The women at your aunt's charity events call me brave. The maids who dress me every morning probably think I'm brave. Do any of you know what that word means, or is it just something you say when you don't know what else to say to the girl in the chair?"

"I was paying you a compliment," Charlotte said stiffly. She uncrossed her legs and straightened her back.

"You were paying yourself a compliment," Adrianna said. "You were being generous to the poor Serathine girl and it made you feel good. That's what this is. That is what this whole afternoon has been."

Charlotte's jaw tightened. "Now, that's unfair, Adrianna. I've been perfectly—"

"What do you actually see when you look at me?" Adrianna asked. She leaned forward in the wheelchair. "Not what your mother told you to say. Not what you rehearsed on the carriage ride over. I want to know what Charlotte Belleford sees when she looks at Adrianna Terassi. Right now. In this room. With nobody watching."

Charlotte set her teacup on the table. The porcelain clicked against the saucer. "I see a girl who has been through something terrible," she said carefully, "and who has a family that loves her and a home that—"

"You see a dog," Adrianna said.

Charlotte flinched. "Excuse me?"

"You have been kind to a dog," Adrianna said. She was sitting forward now, her shoulders rigid, her voice steady and hard. "You pat me on the head and tell me I'm strong, you look at my body when you think I can't see and you talk about your ballrooms and your officers as though I should be grateful to hear about the life I will never have. What right do you have?"

Charlotte stood from the sofa. "I have been nothing but kind to you—"

Adrianna barked. A sharp, loud sound that cracked through the parlour and bounced off the silk wallpaper. Charlotte jerked back a full step, her hand flying to her collar in disbelief. 

"Does that sound right to you?" Adrianna said. "Is that what I am? Do I look like a dog to you, Charlotte? Should I sit and roll over too? Should I lick your hand when you pet me? Wag my tail when you tell me I'm a good girl?"

"Stop it," Charlotte said. Her voice had gone thin.

Adrianna barked again, harder, and Charlotte took another step back, her heel catching the edge of the rug. 

"Sit, Adrianna. Stay, Adrianna. Good girl, Adrianna. You're so brave, Adrianna. So strong. So inspiring. Here's a treat for the poor wounded thing in the chair—"

"I said stop it!" Charlotte shouted. The words tore out of her and her composure came apart. Her face was red from the jaw to the hairline and her hands were shaking. She was standing with her back nearly against the wall, staring at Adrianna with wide, furious eyes. 

"What is wrong with you? I came here as a guest, I sat in this room and I tried to talk to you, I tried to make conversation, I tried to treat you like a normal — like a—"

She faltered. Her mouth worked around words she couldn't find, or a word she had found and couldn't say, and in that hesitation Adrianna saw everything. The slight drop of Charlotte's eyes to the empty sleeves before she pulled them back. The way her hand came up and then went down, reaching for something and then stopping because there was nothing to reach for. The flush that deepened when she realized she had almost said it.

"Like a what?" Adrianna said quietly.

Charlotte swallowed. "Like a person," she said, and the word came out strange. She knew it and her face showed that she knew it. She pressed on anyway, louder now, faster, as though volume could cover the crack. "And you threw it back at me. Every single thing I said, you twisted it. My mother told me to be kind to you. Your aunt told me to be kind to you. Everyone told me to be kind to you and I was, I was kind, and you sit there and snarl at me like some deranged madwoman."

"Your mother calls me a burden," Adrianna said.

Charlotte's mouth snapped shut.

"I heard her," Adrianna said. "Through a doorway. She told Mrs. Ashdown I was a burden and that my aunt was a saint for taking me in. Did she tell you that too, Charlotte? Before you came? Did she sit you down and say ‘be kind to the burden’?"

"My mother would never—"

"She did!"

Charlotte was breathing hard. Her chin was trembling and her fists were clenched at her sides and she looked at Adrianna and whatever she saw gave her permission to stop pretending. 

"Fine," Charlotte said. Her voice dropped and what came out was not the polished Corvanish girl Adrianna had gotten used to hearing. "Fine. You want me to say it? You want to hear what everyone thinks but no one will tell you? You are difficult, Adrianna. You are rude and hostile and ungrateful, and it is not my fault you lost your arms in the war. It is not my fault you are miserable. It is not my fault you can't dress yourself or feed yourself. It’s not my fault you may never feel the man of your dreams wrap his hands around yours! I didn't drop the bombs. I didn't start the Conflagration. And I shouldn't have to sit here and be screamed at by a girl who can't even stand up on her own because I was trying to be nice to her." 

Charlotte was shaking. Her eyes were wet but she was not crying. She stood with her back against the parlour wall, chest heaving, and she looked at Adrianna and the look held everything — anger, guilt, fear. Every flinch toward the sleeves, every careful redirection of her gaze, every time she had said brave and strong and inspiring. Charlotte Belleford had walked into this room and seen exactly what Adrianna accused her of seeing. Something to pity. Something wounded. Something less than human.

The parlour was silent. The clock ticked on the mantel. Outside, the women's voices drifted faintly from the garden, unaware.

"Get out," Adrianna said.

Her voice was low. Barely above a whisper. Charlotte blinked.

"What?" Charlotte said.

"Get out." Louder now. Adrianna's jaw was clenched so tight the muscles in her neck stood visible beneath the skin. "Get out of this house. Get out of my face. Take your mother with you."

Charlotte did not move. Her mouth opened.

"Get out! Get out! Get out!" Adrianna screamed. The sound ripped through the parlour, it was nothing like the girl who had said "yes, please" to Ms. Rosemary that morning. "I don't want you here! I don't want any of you here! I don't want your tea, I don't want your compliments, I don't want your pity! You disgust me! Your mother disgusts me! This whole city disgusts me, every single one of you with your charity galas and your pity smiles, looking at me like I'm something that crawled out of a ditch!"

Charlotte stumbled backward. Her shoulders hit the wall.

"You don't know me!" Adrianna shouted. Her body was trembling, every muscle was rigid, her stumps straining against the fabric of her sleeves. "You don't know what I lost! You don't know what was taken from me! You sit there with your pearls and your fancy boarding school talking about harbours and ballrooms while my family is rotting in the ground in a country none of you can even find on a map!"

She lunged forward. The fury carried her body ahead of her mind, her legs pushing against the footrests, her weight pitching over the front of the chair. For one terrible second she was upright, suspended between the chair and the air, her legs buckling beneath her because she had forgotten to plant them. Her chest hit the edge of the low table. The teacups flew. Cold tea exploded across the white linen, across the polished wood, down the front of her green dress. The table skidded across the floor, she went with it, her shoulder slamming against the hardwood, the wheelchair clattering onto its side behind her.

Charlotte screamed.

The garden door flew open. Mrs. Belleford came through first, already shouting Charlotte's name, and behind her Mrs. Ashdown with her hand at her throat and Mrs. Tate half-risen from her garden chair and then Eloise, pushing past all of them, dropping to the floor beside Adrianna before the door had finished swinging.

"Adrianna! Adrianna, darling, can you hear me—!"

Adrianna could hear her. She could hear everything. Mrs. Belleford seizing Charlotte by the shoulders, shaking her, her voice high and cracking: 

"What happened? Charlotte, what did you do? What did you say to her?" 

Mrs. Ashdown calling for the maid. Mrs. Tate standing in the garden doorway with both hands pressed flat against the frame as though she needed it to stay upright. The teacups rolling across the floor. The drip of tea from the overturned table onto the hardwood. Charlotte's breathing, ragged and hitching, somewhere above and behind her.

Eloise's hands were on Adrianna's face, turning it, checking. "Are you hurt? Adrianna, look at me. Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," Adrianna said. Her cheek was against the floor. Tea was soaking through her dress and the cold felt numbing against her ribs.

"She's bleeding," Mrs. Ashdown said. "Her shoulder, look—"

"Ms. Rosemary!" Eloise shouted down the corridor. Her voice broke on the second syllable. Adrianna had never heard her aunt shout before. "Ms. Rosemary, come quickly!"

Hands. 

Hands everywhere. Eloise's hands on her face. Mrs. Ashdown's hands reaching for her legs. Mrs. Belleford's hands on Charlotte's shoulders, still gripping, still demanding answers. Everyone reaching, everyone helping, everyone doing something for the girl on the floor who could not do anything for herself. Adrianna lay in the center of it and felt every touch like a burn. This was it. This was her life. She could not fall without becoming an emergency. She could not be angry without becoming a spectacle. She could not lie on a floor for ten seconds without six pairs of hands arriving to remind her that she needed them, that she would always need them, that she could not exist in any room without someone else's body bending down to collect her.

"Don't," Adrianna said, but her voice was gone. The scream had taken it. The word came out cracked and thin, lost beneath the noise, beneath Mrs. Belleford demanding that Charlotte explain herself this instant, beneath Eloise calling again for Ms. Rosemary, beneath Mrs. Ashdown asking should they send for a doctor.

"I don't need a doctor," Adrianna whispered. Nobody heard her.

Ms. Rosemary came through the doorway at a half-run, her lace cap askew, a dishcloth still in her hand. She took in the room without stopping — the overturned table, the spilled tea, the wheelchair on its side, Adrianna on the floor, the women standing over her in various states of panic — and she knelt beside Adrianna and righted the chair, lifting her into it with the same arms that had lifted her that morning and every morning before it. Her hands were steady. Her face was calm. She did not ask what happened. She tucked the blanket around Adrianna's legs even though the blanket was soaked with tea, and she turned the chair toward the door.

Adrianna looked at the room as Ms. Rosemary wheeled her out. Eloise walked beside the wheelchair, one hand on the armrest, her knuckles white. She was speaking to Adrianna in a low, continuous murmur — it's all right, darling, we're going upstairs, it's all right — but Adrianna was not listening because the words meant nothing and the hand on the armrest meant nothing and the corridor stretching ahead of her meant nothing. She was wet and hurt. She hated Charlotte Belleford and she hated Mrs. Belleford and she hated this house and she hated this city and she hated the women in the parlour. She hated the wheelchair and she hated the stumps beneath her sleeves and she of all hated herself, she hated herself for falling, for screaming, for losing control, for being the kind of person who could be knocked over by her own fury because her body could not even hold itself upright without arms to catch the fall.

Behind them, from the parlour, Charlotte's voice reached her. Small and stunned, it was as if she were speaking to no one and everyone at once.

"I was only trying to be nice."