She was not stopping.
Her thick hips moved in the rapid, side-to-side sway of a woman walking fast, her dress swinging, her hair loose and bouncing at her shoulders, her face aimed forward with the expression of a woman who has decided that looking back would be a tactical error.
"This is ridiculous, I said I was SORRY—"
"You YELLED—"
"Because you were about to drag us out of our HOME—"
She turned a corner onto the wider part of the main street.
She did not see the man standing there.
Her face connected with the solid wall of his back — not the soft impact of running into a person who stumbles, but the hard, absolute resistance of something that did not move.
Her nose took the full contact.
She stumbled backward.
"CAN'T YOU SEE—" the words came out automatically, the reflex of a woman who has run into an obstacle while arguing and has not yet looked at the obstacle, "—YOU IDIOT—"
She looked up.
Her whole body went limp.
