“I don’t know!” Chloe screamed, hysteria finally taking over. “I didn’t stop! I couldn’t stop! I got the VP promotion! The press release is tomorrow! If I get a DUI, if I get a file, it’s over! My life is over! Mom, you have to help me!”
Beatrice didn’t go to the car. She didn’t ask where the victim was. She didn’t call an ambulance. Instead, her head turned slowly, mechanically, until her cold, calculating eyes locked onto mine. She stepped closer and grabbed my shoulders, her manicured nails digging into my skin with a desperate, terrifying force. Automobilesand vehicles
“Elena,” she hissed, her warm breath against my ear. “You have to do this. You have to save her.”
“Do what, Mom?” I asked, even though a deep and familiar fear was already building in the pit of my stomach.
“Chloé has a life,” said Béatrice, her voice trembling with manic intensity. “She has a trajectory. She goes to places where people like us are supposed to go. But you… look at yourself.” She gestured mockingly toward my plain clothes, the “failure” she had spent twenty years making.
“You’re just a dropout,” spat Beatrice, the venom finally reaching the surface. “You work in a basement clinic. You have no husband, no career, no prospects. You don’t have a future anyway! Tell the police you were driving. You took the car to the store for snacks. They expect someone like you to make a ‘clumsy’ mistake. You’ll get a slap on the wrist. For Chloe, it’s over. For you, it’s just another Tuesday in a life of nothing.” Automobilesand vehicles
The sheer calculation was breathtaking. It wasn’t just that they didn’t like me; it was that they had decided I was subhuman, a spare part to be cannibalized to make the Golden Child function.
“You want me to go to prison,” I said, my voice sounding hollow even to myself. “For a hit-and-run she committed while drunk?”
“It won’t be prison!” Beatrice pleaded, shaking me. “We’ll hire the best lawyers! You’re nobody, Elena! Nobody cares what happens to a legal secretary! But Chloe… her face will be on the cover of the Business Journal!”
I looked at Chloe. She had stopped crying. She was wiping a stray tear from her cheek with the back of her hand, and as she watched our mother scold me, her expression changed. The panic faded, replaced by that familiar, permanent arrogance. She let out a short, high-pitched, uneven laugh. Pregnancyand maternity
