Chương 4
“This isn’t about the fee.”
“What is it about?”
“You’ve spent three months negotiating that profile because the board wants the foundation launch attached to it.”
Grant looked up at the television.
The weather map had changed to an advertisement.
“Then tell the board something changed.”
“What changed?”
He thought of a seven-year-old girl putting a wedding ring on a bakery counter.
“I did.”
Claire was silent long enough that he regretted the sentence.
It sounded like something written for a movie trailer.
“Forget that,” he said.
“Gladly.”
“I’ll call you later.”
“Grant.”
“What?”
“Do not make any public decisions tonight.”
He rubbed his thumb over the numb side of his little finger.
“Why?”
“Because guilt makes you reckless.”
He nearly laughed.
“Good night, Claire.”
“It is five-thirty.”
He hung up.
At six eleven, Rachel appeared.
She stood near the elevators scanning the lobby until she found him.
Grant rose.
Rachel walked over slowly.
Her gray sweater was tied around her waist now. Under it she wore a black T-shirt printed with the name of an elementary school. She looked younger than he had first thought. Mid-thirties, perhaps.
“She asked who brought Lucy back.”
Grant waited.
“I told her.”
Another pause.
“She wants to see you.”
The elevator ride lasted less than a minute.
Rachel used it to establish rules.
“You get five minutes.”
“Understood.”
“You don’t ask her questions.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t tell Lucy things will be fine.”
“I won’t.”
“You don’t talk about money.”
Grant glanced at her.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You were.”
He did not deny it.
Rachel looked ahead.
“And if Erin gets tired, you leave.”
“Yes.”
The doors opened on the seventh floor.
The palliative care wing looked less like a hospital than Grant remembered hospitals looking. The lights were lower. Doors were wooden instead of metal. Someone had placed a vase of grocery-store daisies on a table beside the nurses’ station.
The refrigerator hum from the bakery had followed him in memory. Here it was replaced by air vents, soft wheels, and the measured electronic pulse of monitors farther down the hall.
Grant’s chest tightened.
Rachel noticed.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Say yes when the answer is obviously no.”
Grant looked at her.
She had Lucy’s directness.
He wondered which of them had taught the other.
“I don’t like hospitals.”
“Neither does Erin.”
“That seems inconvenient for a paramedic.”
Rachel’s mouth twitched.
“She’d say the same thing.”
They passed a family lounge.
The cake sat on the table inside.
The lavender candle lay beside it in waxed paper.
Lucy was curled on a couch with her shoes still on, watching nothing on a tablet. A nurse sat beside her, showing her how to fold a paper medication cup into a tiny hat.
Lucy looked up when Grant passed.
She did not smile.
She simply nodded once, as if he had arrived for an appointment.
Erin Hart’s room was at the end of the hall.
Grant stopped outside.
Eight years was a long time to carry a person as one sharp fragment of memory.
He remembered wet hair stuck to a woman’s cheek.
A reflective jacket.
Blood from a cut near her eyebrow, though he later learned the blood had been his.
A gold ring flashing as her hand came through dark water toward him.
Do not close your eyes on me.
He had not remembered her face.
That was the shameful part.
Rachel touched the door.
“You coming?”
Grant entered.
Erin Hart was thirty-eight years old and looked both younger and much older.
Cancer had reduced her body without erasing the structure of her face. Her hair was short and uneven from the last months of treatment. An oxygen cannula rested under her nose. One arm lay above the blanket, bruised from IV access.
No wedding ring.
Grant noticed immediately.
Of course he did.
Her eyes were closed.
Rachel leaned close.
“Erin.”
Nothing.
“Hey. Your river guy is here.”
Erin’s eyelids moved.
Grant looked at Rachel.
“River guy?”
“Apparently it’s catching on.”
Erin opened her eyes.
They were green.
Grant had forgotten that too.
For several seconds she looked at him without recognition.
Then one corner of her mouth moved.
“Well,” she whispered.
Her voice was dry and rough.
Grant stepped closer.
“Hello, Erin.”
She stared at his suit.
“You got expensive.”
Rachel laughed quietly and covered her mouth.
Grant pulled the visitor chair closer to the bed.
“I was already expensive.”
“Worse.”
Her eyes closed.
Grant thought the conversation was over.
Then she said, “Hand.”
He did not understand.
She opened her eyes again.
“Left.”
He held it out.
Erin lifted her own hand with visible effort and touched his little finger.
“Still numb?”
Grant could not answer immediately.
“Partly.”
“Thought so.”
“You remember that?”
“You whined about it.”
“I had nerve damage.”
“You whined with nerve damage.”
Rachel looked delighted.
Grant felt something break loose in his chest that was not laughter and not grief but contained pieces of both.
“I tried to find you,” he said.
Rachel stiffened.
Rule two.
No questions.
No speeches.
Erin’s eyes remained on his hand.
“I know.”
Grant stared at her.
“You knew?”
A faint breath escaped through her nose.
“Your people called my captain.”
“Why didn’t you answer?”
Rachel said, “Grant.”
He stopped.
Erin moved her head slightly on the pillow.
“Didn’t want your money.”
“I wasn’t—”
She looked at him.
Grant closed his mouth.
Erin’s expression held just enough amusement to hurt.
“Okay,” he said. “I probably wanted to give you money.”
“Everybody wants to give money when they don’t know what else to do.”
The sentence was barely louder than the oxygen flow.
Grant sat back.
Erin’s eyes drifted shut.
Rachel watched the monitor.
After several seconds Erin whispered, “Lucy found you?”
“Accidentally.”
“Nothing accidental about Lucy.”
Grant smiled.
“She tried to buy a candle with your wedding ring.”
Erin’s eyes opened immediately.
“What?”
May you like
Rachel stepped in.
“She left the floor while I was talking to Becca. She went to the bakery across the street. She’s safe. She’s here.”
