Chapter 5 - Mrs. Greene
Rain struck my face the moment I stepped outside. The cold shocked me alert. My knees trembled. The driveway looked endless. Behind me, Ethan shouted my name again, but he did not run after me at first. He still believed my leaving was another performance he could wait out.
Mrs. Greene’s porch light glowed three houses down.
She was a widowed retired nurse who lived alone with two cats and a garden full of yellow roses. She had brought me soup during my first trimester when Ethan was “too busy” to pick up groceries. She had once asked, very gently, whether I was safe at home. I had lied because I was embarrassed by the answer.
Now her porch looked like the safest place in the world.
I crossed the wet grass because the sidewalk felt too far. Mud soaked my shoes. My travel bag bumped against my leg. I knocked once, then twice, then a third time, each sound almost swallowed by the rain.
The porch light brightened.
The deadbolt clicked.
Mrs. Greene opened the door in a robe, took one look at me, and her face changed from confusion to calm emergency.
“Elena?”
“I need help,” I said.
She did not ask for details before moving. That was the first mercy.
She wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, guided me into the entryway, and lowered me into a chair with more care than anyone in my own home had shown all night. Her eyes moved over my face, my posture, the way I held my side, the way my hand would not leave my stomach.
“I’m calling 911,” she said.
Ethan appeared at the edge of her porch moments later, soaked and furious.
Mrs. Greene stepped between us.
“Leave,” she said.
May you like
“This is between my wife and me.”
“No,” she replied, lifting the phone. “It is not.”
