Chương 4
This one hurt because it did not.
“And you didn’t call me.”
“I did.”
“No, you called and asked whether we were still coming today.”
“I was trying to hear your voice.”
“You asked if I was bringing the lemon cake.”
“I didn’t know how to ask.”
Evie looked away.
Across the room, Grant had stopped speaking to the deputy.
He was watching them.
Hale came over.
“What’s this about security logs?”
Daniel answered.
Celeste said, “Let me.”
It was the first time that evening Evie heard steel in her mother’s voice.
Hale listened without interrupting.
When Celeste finished, he looked at the panel.
“Are the logs local?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Local display and remote backup.”
“Can they be altered?”
“Local history can be cleared from an admin account. Server records can’t be cleared from here.”
Grant raised his voice from across the room.
“I want a lawyer.”
Hale looked at him.
“That’s a good idea.”
Then to Daniel: “Don’t touch the panel again.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“I built the damn system.”
“And tonight that makes you a witness with technical access to possible evidence.”
Daniel opened his mouth.
Hale lifted one eyebrow.
Daniel shut it.
Evie sat down.
She had not decided to. Her knees simply stopped cooperating.
The paramedic crouched beside her.
“You feeling faint?”
“A little.”
“We should go.”
Evie looked at Grant.
He was no longer watching her.
He was watching the panel.
That frightened her more.
“Yes,” she said. “Okay.”
Daniel stepped forward.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
Evie looked at her father.
His expression softened.
She hated that it made her want to cry.
“I don’t want you there.”
Daniel absorbed it.
“Okay.”
Celeste said, “I’ll go.”
Evie shook her head.
Her mother’s mouth closed.
Hale said, “One of my deputies can ride behind the ambulance.”
Evie nodded.
Grant laughed quietly.
She turned.
He stood between two deputies, his suit jacket open now, white shirt wrinkled where Daniel had grabbed him. His arrogance had returned in pieces.
“This is insane,” he said. “You’re all treating her like she’s some kind of hostage.”
Evie stared at him.
Grant looked back.
There were sixty people in the room.
Crystal above them.
White flowers.
Gold chairs.
The French doors glowing with the last daylight of afternoon.
For six years Evie had known exactly how to prevent Grant from becoming worse.
Do not embarrass him.
Do not contradict him in front of people.
Do not walk away while he is talking.
Do not say calm down.
Do not tell Celeste too much.
Do not tell Daniel anything.
Do not use the word afraid.
Do not make him feel watched.
Do not make him feel small.
She had become extraordinarily good at managing a man who insisted he could not control himself because she provoked him.
Evie rose again.
Her knees shook.
She let them.
“I was,” she said.
Grant’s face went still.
Evie heard her breathing.
She heard a deputy’s radio.
Someone at the back of the room moved a chair.
“I was a hostage,” she said. “I just kept sleeping next to the person holding me.”
Grant lunged one step forward.
The deputies stopped him immediately.
He did not shout.
That was important.
He simply said her name.
“Evie.”
The way he said it made her stomach clench.
Hale looked at her.
“Go.”
She did.
The hospital took three hours.
There was no dramatic rush through swinging doors. No doctors running beside her gurney. Evie sat under fluorescent light while a nurse photographed the bruise on her cheek with a forensic ruler, documented a split lip, two older yellowing marks on her upper arm, and tenderness along her ribs.
When asked whether she had been strangled, Evie said no.
Then she remembered the laundry room.
Not strangled.
His forearm had pressed across her throat for perhaps three seconds.
Maybe four.
She had still been able to breathe.
That distinction had mattered then too.
She told the nurse.
The nurse asked whether she had lost consciousness.
No.
Seen stars?
Maybe.
Difficulty swallowing afterward?
For a few hours.
The questions were ordinary.
That made the answers unbearable.
An unnamed deputy waited outside the room. Hale came once, briefly, after Grant had been taken to the county jail for the threat and suspected domestic assault. He told Evie there would be another interview, not tonight unless she wanted it.
She did not.
“Good,” he said.
She looked at him.
“Good?”
“You’re tired. Tired people agree to things because they want everyone to stop asking questions.”
She studied his face.
“You’ve done this before.”
“Yes.”
“With people you know?”
His eyes moved away.
“No.”
That answer contained more than he said.
Evie looked down at the hospital bracelet.
“What happens to Dad?”
Hale rubbed his mustache.
“That depends.”
“On Grant?”
“Partly.”
“He’ll press charges.”
“Maybe.”
“He will.”
“Then your father may have to answer for what he did.”
Evie nodded.
She expected to feel protective.
Instead she felt relief.
Daniel had hit Grant.
Daniel had done it for her, but he had still done it.
For years every man around Evie had found a reason why his anger was different.
Grant’s because he loved her.
Daniel’s because he protected her.
Grant’s because he was scared.
Daniel’s because he was right.
She was tired of male anger arriving with legal briefs attached.
Hale watched her.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Fair answer.”
“Are you going to protect my dad?”
Hale’s expression sharpened.
“No.”
She nodded.
“Good.”
He seemed surprised.
Then not surprised at all.
When Hale left, Evie sat alone in the examination room and stared at a dispenser of paper towels mounted crookedly beside the sink.
It bothered her.
Not emotionally.
Literally.
It leaned perhaps three degrees to the left.
For ten minutes she thought about how someone had drilled holes into a hospital wall, mounted a paper-towel dispenser crooked, looked at it, and decided the job was finished.
She started laughing.
May you like
The laugh hurt her ribs.
Then she cried.
