Chương 5
“My ring?”
“She has it.”
Erin’s face tightened.
Not from the loss of the jewelry.
Grant recognized fear.
“What did she hear?”
Rachel looked away.
“Rach.”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she hear?”
Rachel folded her arms.
“Dr. Shah said you probably had hours.”
“You told her?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“She was in the hall.”
Erin stared at her sister.
“I thought she was with Becca.”
“She thought you were asleep.”
Grant stood.
“I should go.”
Erin looked at him.
“No.”
The word was weak but absolute.
He stopped.
She swallowed.
“When did she leave?”
“About forty minutes before we found her,” Rachel said.
Erin closed her eyes.
“Damn it.”
Rachel rubbed her face.
“I know.”
“No. I told you not to hide things from her.”
“I wasn’t hiding. I was trying to keep her from sitting next to a clock all day waiting for you to die.”
Erin opened her eyes.
“And now she crossed six lanes of traffic to buy me a cake.”
“Four lanes.”
“Not helping.”
Grant stared at the floor.
The sisters had forgotten him.
It was the most normal thing that had happened since he arrived.
Rachel’s voice broke.
“What was I supposed to say to her?”
“The truth.”
“She’s seven.”
“She’s seven, not furniture.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
Rachel stepped back as if struck.
Grant moved toward the door.
Erin said, “Stay.”
He looked at her.
“Why?”
“Because she’s meaner with witnesses.”
Rachel gave her sister an offended look.
“That’s not true.”
Erin managed the smallest smile.
Then her face tightened with pain.
Rachel reached for the call button.
Erin caught her wrist.
“No. It’s okay.”
“Your face says no.”
“My face has always been dramatic.”
Grant looked away.
Rachel bent close.
“What do you need?”
“Lucy.”
“Okay.”
“And the cake.”
Rachel stared.
“Erin.”
“It’s my birthday.”
“You can’t eat.”
“I can look.”
Grant almost smiled.
Rachel did not.
“You’re impossible.”
“Genetic.”
Rachel wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand.
“I’ll get her.”
When she left, Grant remained standing.
Erin watched him.
“You really did get expensive.”
Grant pulled at his tie.
“I can take it off if it bothers you.”
“No. Then you’d look like a politician at a barbecue.”
He sat.
Silence settled between them.
It was not peaceful.
Grant could hear his own breathing, the faint oxygen flow, and a monitor from another room marking someone else’s time.
Erin looked toward the window.
“River still bother you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He frowned.
“Good?”
“Means your brain works.”
“You always this comforting?”
“Only near death.”
Grant looked at her.
She said it without self-pity.
That made it worse.
“You saved my life.”
Erin’s eyelids lowered.
“We’re not doing that.”
“I need to say it.”
“You already did.”
“When?”
“Eight years ago. You were high as hell on morphine. Tried to shake my hand and threw up.”
Grant stared.
“That happened?”
“On my shoe.”
He put a hand over his eyes.
“That may explain why no one told me.”
“It was a bad shoe.”
Grant laughed.
He had not expected to.
The sound seemed too loud in the room.
Erin smiled faintly.
Then she coughed.
It took time for her to recover.
Grant waited.
His instinct was to call someone, adjust something, fix something.
He did none of those things.
When her breathing settled, Erin said, “You let them write that you got yourself out.”
The room changed.
Grant lowered his hand.
Erin was looking at him now.
Not accusing.
That would have been easier.
“I did.”
“Why?”
He could have said his communications department had been trying to stabilize lenders during a vulnerable quarter. He could have said the earliest news reports were confused and the company had never formally claimed he swam free on his own.
All of those statements were true.
None answered the question.
“Because it sounded better.”
Erin nodded.
Grant waited for anger.
It did not come.
“That all?”
“No.”
“What else?”
“I liked it.”
Her gaze stayed on him.
“I liked people believing I had fought my way out.”
“That makes more sense.”
He almost resented her for saying it so calmly.
“You could have corrected it.”
“Why would I?”
“Because it wasn’t true.”
“Not my company.”
“It was your life.”
“Still is for another few hours.”
Grant looked down.
Erin shifted her hand on the blanket.
“Don’t do that either.”
“What?”
“Make my dying about your guilt.”
His face warmed.
“You haven’t changed much.”
“You don’t know me.”
“No.”
She was right.
He knew an incident report. A name. A cold hand. An eight-year-old memory he had polished into private mythology.
He did not know Erin Hart.
Lucy did.
Rachel did.
The nurses did.
The people whose photographs were taped to the wall beside her bed knew her.
One picture showed Erin in a paramedic uniform eating pizza from a paper plate. Another showed her with Lucy at a county fair. There was a photograph of a man Grant assumed had been Lucy’s father, laughing beside Erin on a beach.
His eyes stopped there.
Erin followed his gaze.
“Ben.”
Grant nodded.
“He died?”
“Five years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Her fingers moved toward the place where a ring would have been.
“He would hate what Lucy did with that ring.”
Grant imagined a child carrying one of the few pieces of a dead father across a traffic intersection because she was short twenty-five cents.
“He might understand.”
“No. He was cheap.”
Grant looked at her.
Erin smiled.
“Would’ve told her to steal the candle.”
Grant laughed again.
A soft knock came at the door.
Lucy entered holding the bakery box.
Rachel followed.
The girl walked straight to the bed.
“I’m sorry.”
Erin looked at the box.
“For the cake?”
“For leaving.”
“Good.”
Lucy’s face crumpled slightly.
Erin reached for her.
“Come here.”
Lucy climbed carefully onto the edge of the bed without touching the tubing.
She had done it before.
May you like
Her movements had the efficiency of practice.
Erin touched the wrong button on Lucy’s cardigan.
