I did not push her to the floor and I did not stand over her.

I stepped back.

But she was already on the ground, and she understood instantly, with the animal instinct that governed her, exactly what to do with that.

“Help!

She’s trying to kill me!

My daughter-in-law is murdering me!” She rolled and clutched her face and pitched her voice to carry through the walls to the neighbors, and the performance was so immediate and so total that I understood the fall had become, in the space of a second, a weapon she intended to use.