I grabbed Lily before Daniel could touch her again.
She slammed into my chest, damp and shaking, and buried her face under my chin. Up close, I could smell the chemical on her skin. Not soap. Not shampoo. Something sharp and bitter.
‘It burns,’ she whispered.
Daniel stood up so fast the brush clattered into the tub. ‘You’re blowing this out of proportion,’ he said. ‘I was helping her.’
Then Mara hit the top stair.
My sister took one look at Lily’s shoulder, then at the open bottle on the floor, and her whole face changed.
She didn’t yell. Mara never yelled in a crisis. She stepped between me and Daniel, held out her hand, and said, ‘Back away.’
He laughed once. Dry. ‘It’s developer. Women use this stuff all the time.’
‘Not on a child’s skin,’ Mara said.
I already had 911 on speaker by then. Daniel heard the dispatcher and reached for my phone. Mara shoved his wrist aside before he got close.
He stumbled into the sink hard enough to rattle the mirror, and that was the first time he looked scared.
The paramedics arrived with two officers less than ten minutes later. It felt longer. Everything did.
Lily rode to the ER on my lap, wrapped in warmed blankets, while Mara followed behind us with the bottle and brush sealed in a plastic bag. She’d grabbed them before the police even asked.
That was Mara. Always two steps ahead when everyone else was still trying to name the disaster.
At the hospital, the doctor cleaned Lily’s shoulder and said the irritation wasn’t from one night. The skin had been repeatedly abraded, then exposed to chemicals. Some spots were shallow burns. Others were older healing areas reopened again.
Repeatedly.
