Chương 3
Margaret stared at him as if no one had used that tone with her in twenty years.
“I’m going to the hospital.”
“No, ma’am.”
“My daughter-in-law—”
“Asked that your son not accompany her. I’m also trying to understand why an injured pregnant woman was behind a locked door.”
“It was a misunderstanding.”
Rachel almost smiled.
The deputy did not.
“Then it should be easy to clear up.”
The stretcher moved.
Rachel watched Daniel until the doorway blocked him from view.
He did not follow.
Outside, wedding guests stood in clusters across the lawn.
The orchestra had stopped.
White linen tables looked abandoned beneath strings of lights. Champagne glasses remained half full. A waiter stood beside an overturned chair with both hands hanging uselessly at his sides.
Leah came running barefoot across the grass.
Someone tried to stop her.
She shoved past him.
“Rachel!”
Rachel turned her head.
Leah reached the ambulance as they opened the doors.
Her dark hair had fallen from its pins.
“What happened?”
Rachel looked at her oldest friend and discovered she did not know how to answer the question.
“My dress is ruined,” she said.
Leah stared.
Then Rachel laughed once.
It came out wrong.
Leah started crying.
“Jesus Christ, Rach.”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
Rachel looked toward the house.
Daniel had appeared at an upstairs window.
Margaret stood behind him.
For a second the three of them looked like figures posed in separate rooms of the same dollhouse.
“Someone locked me in.”
Leah stopped crying.
“What?”
The ambulance doors closed.
At the hospital, everything became fluorescent light, signatures, questions and faces Rachel could not remember five minutes after seeing them.
She was transferred from the emergency department to obstetric triage and then almost immediately to an operating room.
A physician named Dr. Hsu explained what the monitors were showing.
Rachel understood perhaps one word in three.
Bleeding.
Baby.
Distress.
Delivery.
Now.
“Is she going to live?”
Dr. Hsu leaned closer.
“We’re taking care of both of you.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
A brief pause.
“No,” the doctor said gently. “It wasn’t.”
Rachel appreciated her for that.
Someone asked whether Daniel should be contacted.
“No.”
Another contraction seized her before she could say more.
She gripped the bed rail.
Leah had arrived behind the ambulance and somehow made it through security. She appeared beside Rachel in a disposable cap, still wearing the pale green bridesmaid dress she had spilled red wine on during cocktail hour.
“You always hated this color,” Rachel said.
Leah blinked.
“What?”
“The dress.”
“Oh.”
Leah looked down.
“It does make me look seasick.”
Rachel laughed and immediately cried.
Not dramatically.
One tear slipped toward her ear.
She was furious at it.
“Hey,” Leah said.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Good.”
Rachel looked at the ceiling.
“I don’t want anyone telling me everything’s going to be okay.”
“Okay.”
“Because they don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“And if Daniel gets in here—”
“I’ll bite him.”
Rachel turned her head.
Leah shrugged.
“I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know what the approved procedure is.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
The operating room doors opened.
For the next stretch of time, her life became sound without sequence.
People introduced themselves.
Machines beeped.
Someone counted instruments.
Someone asked her name and birth date again.
She answered.
There were hands near her shoulders, a mask, pressure, a voice telling her the baby was coming.
Then the strangest silence Rachel had ever heard.
It lasted perhaps two seconds.
Maybe less.
Long enough for every fear she had refused to name for eight months to crowd into it.
Then a thin cry rose from somewhere beyond the curtain.
Rachel stopped breathing.
Someone said, “There she is.”
She.
They had known the sex but had never used the name publicly. Margaret had disliked the name. That had nearly guaranteed Rachel would keep it.
“Evelyn,” Rachel whispered.
Leah squeezed her hand.
“Yes.”
Rachel began shaking.
“Can I see her?”
A nurse appeared briefly with a tiny face beneath a knitted cap.
Rachel saw one cheek.
A small open mouth.
Furious life.
Then the baby was gone again.
“Where are you taking her?”
“The neonatal team is evaluating her.”
“Is she okay?”
“She needs some support breathing.”
Rachel tried to lift her head.
Someone told her to lie back.
“I want Daniel.”
The words escaped before she understood she had said them.
Leah’s hand loosened.
Rachel looked at her.
“I don’t know why I said that.”
“It’s okay.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“Rach.”
“He locked me in a room.”
“I know.”
“And I want him.”
Leah’s face twisted.
“You can want him and hate him.”
Rachel stared upward.
That felt intolerably true.
Daniel was not allowed into recovery.
Rachel asked three separate people to make sure.
Then, fifteen minutes later, she asked whether he was still at the hospital.
The nurse checked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Waiting area.”
“Is his mother with him?”
The nurse left and returned.
“No.”
Rachel felt relief.
She despised herself for it.
“What about the baby?”
“NICU. Stable right now.”
Right now.
Rachel pressed her fingers against her mouth.
She could still smell Margaret’s perfume.
No.
Not Margaret’s.
Her own.
Orange blossom and broken crystal.
The scent seemed trapped inside her nose.
She asked for water, then remembered the dispatcher.
“Wait.”
The nurse paused.
“What?”
“Is this sealed?”
The nurse looked at the plastic cup.
“It came from the dispenser.”
Rachel hated how foolish she sounded.
“Can I have a bottle instead?”
“Of course.”
No question.
No smile.
The nurse brought a sealed bottle and opened it in front of her.
Rachel drank half.
At three in the morning, a sheriff’s detective named Elena Vasquez arrived.
Rachel was awake because sleep had become impossible.
Every time she drifted, she heard the perfume bottle break.
Vasquez wore plain clothes and carried no visible impatience.
She sat beside the bed and told Rachel she could return another time.
“No.”
“You’ve had surgery.”
“I know.”
“We have enough for tonight.”
May you like
“No, you don’t.”
Vasquez studied her.
