Chapter 12 - A Mother's Choice
"Don't move! Nobody move!" the chief building inspector shouted, holding his arms out. "The entire load-bearing crossbeam is fractured! If anyone shifts their weight, the whole section will drop through to the ground floor!"
Vanessa was sobbing hysterically now, all her arrogance, all her diamond-studded cruelty swallowed by primal terror. The rough, splintered timber was digging into her thigh; jagged rusty nails were inches from her femoral artery. Beneath her dangling leg was a twenty-foot drop onto the concrete floor of the basement boiler room.
"Daniel!" Vanessa shrieked, her knuckles bleeding as she gripped a cracked floor stud. "Pull me up! Please, baby, pull me up! It's slipping!"
Daniel took half a step forward, his boot creaking on the wood.
*CREEEAAK.*
A shower of dust and plaster fell from the ceiling below. Daniel flinched, terrified, and leaped backward to the safety of the reinforced landing, leaving his wife dangling over the abyss.
"I can't!" Daniel sobbed, clutching his head in his hands. "The floor is going to break! I can't reach you!"
"You coward!" Vanessa screamed, her voice cracking into a ragged, pathetic wail. "You miserable coward! Somebody help me! Please!"
Arthur Vance and her private security guards were already retreating down the stairs, unwilling to risk their lives for a client whose retainer check had just bounced.
I didn't think about the kick in the ballroom.
I didn't think about the stitches in my cheek, or the vicious lies her PR team had spread on the morning news, or the fact that this woman had tried to destroy everything Frank and I had built.
All I saw was a human being five seconds away from falling to her death.
"Robert, hold my belt," I said calmly, dropping to my knees.
"Eleanor, no! It's too dangerous!" Robert shouted, reaching for me.
"Hold my belt, Robert!" I ordered, my voice ringing with the steel of forty-six years on the factory floor.
Robert saw the fire in my eyes, clamped his powerful hands onto the thick leather belt of my wool coat, and braced his boots against the solid doorframe of the hallway.
I crawled forward on my stomach, spreading my weight evenly across the joists just as Frank had taught me decades ago when we had to repair the high rafters in our first machine shop. Dust stung my eyes; the sharp edges of broken lath tore at my sleeves.
I reached the edge of the hole.
Vanessa looked up at me. Her designer sunglasses were gone; mascara was running in black rivers down her pale, terrified face. Her teeth were chattering violently.
"Eleanor..." she whispered, her voice barely audible. "Please... don't let me fall."
"Give me your hands, Vanessa," I said, extending both of my arms across the broken beam.
"I... I can't let go of the beam! If I let go, I'll slip!"
"If you don't let go of the beam, it will snap in ten seconds and take you with it," I said, looking straight into her eyes with absolute clarity. "Look at me, Vanessa. Look at the old woman you called a worthless peasant. Trust my hands, or fall."
Vanessa looked into my eyes. For the first time in her life, she saw someone who wasn't playing a game, someone who didn't care about social status, someone who was offering life simply because it was the right thing to do.
Sobbing, Vanessa let go of the splintered timber and lunged upward, grabbing my wrists with all her remaining strength.
The sudden weight nearly yanked my shoulders from their sockets. Pain shot through my injured cheek and down my spine. The floor groaned beneath my chest.
"Pull, Robert!" I screamed.
Behind me, Robert roared, his massive shoulders hauling back on my belt. Maria Santos and Keisha rushed forward, disregarding their own safety, dropping to their knees to grab the fabric of my coat and pull with everything they had.
With a collective heave, we dragged Vanessa Mitchell out of the hole just as the entire three-foot section of floor collapsed, crashing into the dark basement below with a thunderous roar that shook the entire building.
Vanessa lay on the safe hallway landing, gasping for air, covered in white plaster dust, her cashmere coat shredded, her leg bleeding from deep wood splinters.
She looked up at me, trembling from head to foot.
I stood up slowly, brushing the dust from my knees, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
Daniel rushed forward, dropping beside his wife. "Vanessa! Oh God, Vanessa, you're alive!"
He reached out to touch her, but Vanessa slapped his hands away with what little strength she had left.
"Don't touch me," Vanessa croaked, her voice hollow and dead. "You ran away. Your seventy-year-old mother crawled onto that floor... and you ran away."
Daniel fell back onto his heels, completely crushed, looking like a ghost in his expensive, useless suit.
I looked down at both of them—my broken son and his ruined wife—and felt no triumph. I felt only a profound, heavy sorrow.
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"The ambulance is outside," I said softly to Vanessa. "Go get your leg cleaned up. You have a long road ahead of you, and none of it will be easy."
***