THE TABLET ON THE CASE

Michael’s hand was still raised when Karen asked, “Is that recording?”

“It was when I left it,” I said.

He looked at the tablet. Then he looked at me, sprawled on the stone floor with my badge twisted under my shoulder.

“Don’t touch it,” Karen said.

Michael lowered his hand. “Why not?”

“That’s my tablet. It’s for the catering inventory.” She stepped around a broken piece of bronze and reached for the case.

“Leave it there,” I said.

Karen’s fingers closed around the tablet’s edge anyway. She lifted it, and the cover slipped against the glass with a sharp squeak.

Michael moved between her and the doorway. “Give it to me.”

She held the tablet against her white apron. “You need to get Liam out of here. There’s broken metal everywhere.”

Liam was still on the bench, his face wet, his feet pulled up beneath him. I pushed myself onto one knee.

“I’ll get him,” I said.

Michael turned sharply. “Stay away from my son.”

I stopped. My cheek throbbed where he had struck it.

“Then you get him,” I said. “There’s a piece by the left leg of the bench.”

He followed my finger. A dark bronze shard lay against the pale stone, almost hidden in the shadow. He stepped around it, lifted Liam, and settled him against his tweed jacket.

Liam caught a fistful of the jacket’s lapel. Michael rubbed his back, but his eyes stayed on Karen.

“The tablet,” he said.

She handed it over.

The screen had gone dark. Michael tapped it, and a camera view appeared: the glass cases, the columns, the bench. A small red symbol glowed in the corner.

Karen leaned close. “You can’t just go through my things.”

“You said Nora dropped it,” Michael said.

“She did.”

“Then the recording should show that.”

He touched the screen. The red symbol disappeared.

For a moment none of us moved. The only sound was Liam’s breathing against his father’s shoulder and the low hum of the lights above us.

“I don’t know how to play it back,” Michael said.

“I do,” Karen said quickly, reaching for the tablet.

I got to my feet, keeping one hand on the case. “There’s a square at the bottom of the screen. Tap that.”

Karen’s hand dropped.

Michael tapped the square. A still image appeared, showing the gallery entrance and a slice of the bench. He pressed the play symbol.

The tablet’s speaker gave a tinny crackle. On the screen, Liam sat alone on the bench, kicking his bare feet. Behind him, the exhibit hall stretched between the stone columns.

“That was before,” Karen said. “Go forward.”

Michael dragged his finger along the bottom of the screen.

On the tablet, Karen entered carrying the bust against her apron. She set it on the bench beside Liam, then bent over him. The sound was faint, but Liam’s crying came through.

“I was moving it out of his reach,” she said.

The video showed her picking up the bust again. Her elbows rose. The bronze went over her head.

“Shut up!” burst from the little speaker.

Michael’s thumb froze against the glass.

On the recording, I ran into view, my dark blazer flaring behind me. “Put him down!”

Karen turned. I dove, both arms out. The bust slipped past my hands, struck the floor and broke apart. The tablet caught the clatter, Liam’s scream and my voice telling him, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Michael stopped the video.

Karen stared at the black edge of the screen. “You don’t understand what was happening.”

He held Liam closer. “You lifted that over him.”

“I wasn’t going to drop it.”

“You did drop it.”

“She came at me!” Karen pointed toward my face again. “She startled me.”

I took a step back from her hand. “I ran because you were holding it over Liam.”

Karen turned to Michael. “He’d been crying for ten minutes. I couldn’t find you, and she’d disappeared.”

“I was at the front desk,” I said. “You told me you could watch him while I found his father.”

Michael looked at me. “You came to get me?”

“I asked the guard to call you from the loading entrance. He said you were helping bring in the food.”

Michael nodded once. “I heard the call. By the time I got here—”

“You saw me on the floor,” I said.

He glanced at my cheek. A red mark had begun to spread across it; I could feel the heat without touching it.

Karen edged toward the doorway.

“Where are you going?” Michael asked.

“To get the guard. Somebody has to.”

“I’ll call him.” Michael shifted Liam to one arm and took his phone from his jacket pocket.

Karen stopped. “Michael, don’t make this bigger than it is.”

He put the phone to his ear. “It’s already big enough.”

While he spoke, I crouched beside the broken bust. Its hollow interior showed through a jagged split. One fragment had landed so close to the bench that it had caught in the hem of Liam’s blanket.

I pulled the blanket free carefully and laid it on the seat. Liam reached for it.

“Can I give him this?” I asked.

Michael hesitated, then nodded. I shook it out away from them and passed it over. Liam pressed the soft edge to his mouth.

The guard arrived with the front-desk attendant. His shoes squeaked on the polished floor as he stopped at the fragments.

“Is anyone hurt?” he asked.

“Liam isn’t,” I said.

The attendant looked at my face. “You should sit down.”

“I’m all right standing.”

Michael held out the tablet. “This recorded it. Please keep it somewhere safe.”

Karen stepped forward. “That belongs to me.”

The guard didn’t take it immediately. “What happened?”

“She held the bust over my son,” Michael said. “It fell. Then she told me Nora did it.”

Karen shook her head. “I told you, Nora rushed me.”

“And I hit her,” Michael said.

The words came out flat. He looked at the guard, not at me. “I knocked her down.”

The attendant pulled a small notebook from her pocket. “I’m calling the museum director and emergency services.”

“I don’t need an ambulance,” I said.

“Let them check you,” she said. “You hit the floor.”

Karen folded her arms over her apron. “You’re calling emergency services over an accident?”

The guard took the tablet from Michael. “I’m calling the police. You can explain what happened to them.”

Karen opened her mouth, then shut it. The guard carried the tablet to the front desk, with the attendant walking beside him.

Michael stayed near the bench. Liam had finally stopped crying, though every few breaths he gave a little hitch and gripped his blanket harder.

“I’m sorry,” Michael said to me.

I touched my cheek. “You didn’t ask me what happened.”

“No.” He looked down at Liam. “I saw him crying. I saw you beside the broken bust, and I believed her.”

Karen gave a short laugh. “So now everything’s my fault?”

Michael turned toward her. “You pointed at Nora.”

“You were standing there doing nothing.”

“I was trying to see if my son was hurt.”

“And I was trying to stop her,” I said.

Karen’s eyes flicked toward the front desk. “That tablet has private work on it.”

“The guard knows it’s yours,” I said. “He also knows what’s on the recording.”

She pulled at the knot of her apron, loosening it, then tied it again. “I need my bag from the kitchen.”

“You can wait here,” Michael said.

“You’re not in charge of me.”

“No,” he said. “But the police are coming.”

She stayed.

The emergency crew arrived first. One of them examined Liam while Michael held him, checking his arms and legs and running a light gently across his eyes. Liam grabbed at the medic’s sleeve.

“He looks fine,” she told Michael. “Keep an eye on him tonight. If anything changes, have him checked again.”

The other medic asked me to sit. This time I did. He pressed a cool pack into my hand and shone a light in my eyes.

“Any dizziness? Nausea?”

“My jaw hurts,” I said. “And my hip where I landed.”

He wrote that down. Across the hall, Karen watched the front desk. She hadn’t looked at the broken bust since the guard took the tablet.

Two police officers came in a few minutes later. The guard brought them to us, then returned to his post at the doorway.

The first officer spoke with Karen near a column. The second asked Michael and me to remain by the bench.

“I need to hear it from each of you separately,” he said.

Michael looked at me. “You can go first.”

I held the cool pack against my cheek and described the bust above Liam, the dive, and the pieces scattering across the floor. I told him what Karen had said when Michael arrived, and what Michael had done.

The officer wrote without interrupting. When I finished, he asked, “Do you want to report the assault?”

Michael’s hand tightened around Liam’s blanket.

“Yes,” I said.

The officer nodded and turned to him. “I’ll need your statement too.”

Michael passed Liam to the front-desk attendant, who had returned with a clean cloth for his face. Then Michael sat on the far end of the bench, leaving the space between us empty.

I listened as he told the officer he had struck me. He didn’t say his hand had slipped or that I had come at him. When he finished, he signed the officer’s notes.

Across the hall, Karen was still talking. The other officer held up a hand and asked her to wait while he checked the recording.

She watched him walk to the front desk.

The museum director arrived carrying a ring of keys. After speaking with the officers, she came to me and asked for my badge number. Her eyes rested on the red mark across my cheek, but she didn’t touch me.

“We’ll close this hall,” she said. “You don’t have to finish your shift.”

I unclipped my museum badge from my blazer. The pin had bent when I fell. I straightened it against the edge of the bench and fastened it back on.

At the front desk, the officer finished watching the tablet. He called his partner over, and they spoke quietly before returning to Karen.

She reached for her apron knot again.

“Put your hands down, please,” one officer said.

The director opened the side doors so visitors wouldn’t have to pass through the exhibit hall. Beyond them, I could see the lobby lights and a row of folded strollers.

Michael stood and took Liam from the attendant. He came toward me, then stopped a few feet away.

“Would you like me to drive you to the hospital?” he asked.

“No.”

He nodded. “I’ll give the officer my number, in case you need it.”

He went back to the bench and wrote it on a page torn from the attendant’s notebook. He left the page beside me instead of trying to put it in my hand.

A medic asked whether I was ready. I picked up the page, folded it once, and followed her through the side doors, leaving Michael to answer the officer’s next question.