“My Mom Smashed a Vase at My Pregnant Belly—Then My Husband Walked In.”

### Part 2

My father’s fingers dug into my upper arm as he pulled me toward the corner near the catering table.

I stumbled because my balance was already bad from the pregnancy, and because my body had started sending warnings I was too angry to understand. A hot ache dragged across my lower back. My belly tightened, then released. Tightened again.

“Let go of me,” I said.

My father leaned close enough that I could smell the sharp mint on his breath.

“You are not going to embarrass this family in front of the Merritts,” he said. “Do you understand me?”

“That truck is titled in my name.”

My mother stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the guests. Her pearls trembled against her throat.

“You can buy another one,” she whispered. “Lyric needs this.”

I laughed once, because the words were too ugly to enter my body any other way.

“She needs my ninety-one-thousand-dollar truck?”

“She needs a future,” my mother snapped. “Ryker’s family expects a certain standard. You already have your job, your husband, your house. Why do you always have to take everything from her?”

I looked past her toward Lyric.

My sister stood beside Ryker’s mother with my keys now tucked into her clutch. She did not look nervous anymore. She looked satisfied.

That was when I understood.

This had not been a misunderstanding. This was not Lyric taking the truck too far and my parents panicking afterward. They had planned it. They had built a lie around my property and expected me to swallow it because swallowing pain was my assigned role in the family.

I reached into my purse.

“I’m calling the police.”

My father’s face changed.

It was a small change. A narrowing of his eyes. A tightening around his mouth. But I had known him my whole life, and I recognized the moment he stopped thinking of me as his daughter and started thinking of me as a problem.

Lyric rushed over then, her heels clicking against the floor.

“Dad, stop her,” she whispered. “She’ll ruin everything.”

My mother’s hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.

“You ungrateful little brat,” she said.

“Let go.”

“After everything we’ve done for you?”

I looked at her. Really looked at her. At the smooth makeup, the controlled rage, the mother I had spent my whole childhood trying to earn.

“What did you ever do for me?”

Her mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

For one beautiful second, I thought the truth had finally cornered her.

Then her gaze moved to the side table.

There was a heavy ceramic vase there, tall and cream-colored, stuffed with white branches and fake gold leaves. One of those ridiculous decorative things event venues use to look expensive.

My mother grabbed it with both hands.

The whole room went quiet in pieces, like silence falling down stairs.

“Marcella,” my father said, but he did not move to stop her.

My mother’s face twisted.

“You ruin everything you touch,” she said.

Then she swung.

I remember the sound more than the pain at first. A dull, awful crack. The vase breaking. Someone gasping. My own breath vanishing.

White light burst behind my eyes.

I went backward.

My hip struck the catering table first, then the corner drove into the side of my belly with a force that stole the world from me. I hit the floor hard, one hand on my head, the other around my stomach.

Then warmth spread under me.

For a second, I thought I had lost control of my bladder.

Then the first contraction hit.

It rolled through me like my bones were being twisted from the inside. I screamed. Not a pretty scream. Not the kind people describe in books. It was raw and animal and full of terror.

“My baby,” I gasped. “Something’s wrong.”

Nobody moved.

Not at first.

My mother stepped back, breathing hard. Her eyes dropped to the broken pieces of the vase, then to the guests watching in horror.

“She slipped,” my father said quickly. Too quickly. “Everyone saw it. She slipped.”

I looked up at him from the floor.

He would not meet my eyes.

Ryker’s mother stood frozen, one hand pressed to her mouth. My mother reached for her arm and pulled her back.

“Careful,” my mother said. “Don’t get anything on your dress.”

That sentence entered me like a second injury.

I was on the floor. Pregnant. Hurt. In labor too early.

And my mother was worried about a stranger’s dress.

Lyric stood behind them, clutching her purse with both hands.

I could see the shape of my keys inside it.

“Call 911,” I said.

My voice was barely there.

No one answered.

Then a chair scraped violently across the floor.

My cousin, Sable, shoved past two guests and dropped to her knees beside me. Sable had always been the only person in my mother’s family who seemed to notice I existed outside of what I could provide.

Her face went pale when she saw me.

“Oh my God, Arden.”

“My water broke,” I whispered. “Callum. Call Callum.”

She pulled out her phone with shaking hands.

My mother lunged toward her. “Do not make this worse.”

Sable turned on her with a look I had never seen before.

“Move,” she said. “Or I will scream so loud every person on this lake hears what you did.”

My mother stopped.

Sable called 911 first. Then Callum.

I heard her voice crack.

“Callum, it’s Sable. Get to the lake house now. Your wife is hurt. The baby is coming. Her mother hit her.”

My father shouted, “That is not what happened.”