“I don’t know, I don’t know—my water broke.”
“Listen to me.” His voice changed, flattening into command, the tone I had only heard twice before when something serious happened. “Are you bleeding?”
“A little. I don’t know. It hurts.”
“Can you put me on speaker?”
My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the phone, but I managed it.
Ethan’s voice filled the polished hallway. “Mr. Bennett. Mrs. Bennett. This is Ethan. Call emergency services now. Then unlock the back gate and clear the yard.”
My mother gave a disbelieving laugh. “The yard?”
“Do it,” he said.
Something in his tone startled all of us into stillness.
My father found his voice first. “Don’t you speak to us like—”
“Your daughter is in premature labor on your floor,” Ethan said, each word cut from ice. “You can argue with me later. Right now you will do exactly as I say.”
Another contraction ripped through me. I screamed.
My father swore and moved at last, striding toward the kitchen windows that looked out over the lawn. My mother hovered uselessly beside me, arms half-lifted, as though uncertain whether touching me would wrinkle her blouse.
“Amelia,” Ethan said. “Stay with me.”
“I’m trying.”