Chương 10
“She made Lily that drink.”
“I know.”
“She brought you food.”
“I know.”
“She kept telling me you were making yourself sick.”
My skin prickled.
“What?”
Daniel was breathing faster now.
“After every hospital visit.”
“What exactly did she say?”
“That you liked the attention.”
My fingers went numb again.
“That you were punishing me.”
“Daniel.”
“That you’d always been fragile.”
“Stop.”
“She said if I kept rescuing you, you’d never get better.”
“Stop.”
He stopped.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead.
The pain had returned.
“Why did you believe her?”
He did not answer.
“Daniel.”
“Because sometimes you got sick after we fought.”
“And that made sense to you?”
“At the time.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I know.”
The words came out quietly.
No defense.
No correction.
No counterattack.
Just I know.
It hurt worse.
I stared at the monitor.
“You told a judge I fake illness.”
“I know.”
“You told Lily I have episodes.”
“I know.”
“You let your attorney use my medical records to make me look unstable.”
“I know.”
My voice broke.
“You knew I was scared.”
“I thought you were manipulating me.”
“And now?”
There was a long silence.
“Now I think my mother might have taught me exactly what she needed me to believe.”
I closed my eyes.
Bell shifted near the door.
Daniel continued.
“She called me after every time you got sick.”
“What?”
“She’d ask what happened.”
“Before or after you told her?”
“Sometimes before.”
My eyes opened.
“What do you mean before?”
“She’d call and say you sounded off.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Daniel.”
“I’m trying.”
His breathing became ragged.
“Once in March.”
I remembered March.
I had collapsed in the laundry room after drinking tea Patricia brought that afternoon.
Daniel found me on the floor.
Patricia had called him fifteen minutes earlier.
My stomach turned.
“What did she say?”
“That I should check on you.”
“Why?”
“She said you sounded strange on the phone.”
“I didn’t talk to her that day.”
Silence.
“Daniel?”
“She said you called her.”
“I didn’t.”
He made a sound like he had been hit.
Bell stepped closer.
“When in March?”
I held up a finger and put the call on speaker.
“Daniel, Detective Bell is here.”
“Fine.”
Bell spoke.
“Mr. Whitaker, do you have the date?”
“I can find it.”
“Do that.”
“I have texts.”
“Do not delete anything.”
“I won’t.”
“Do not call your mother.”
Daniel hesitated.
“She’s missing.”
“That is exactly why you do not call her.”
Another pause.
“Okay.”
Bell continued.
“Do you know where she might go?”
“She has a cabin.”
My heart sank.
Bell became still.
“Where?”
“Near Lake Mercer.”
“Address?”
“I’ll text it.”
“Anyone there?”
“No.”
“Vehicle?”
“Silver Lexus.”
“Plate?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll get it.”
Bell was already moving toward the door.
Then Daniel said, “Wait.”
Bell stopped.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“My mother called me from the courthouse parking lot.”
I gripped the phone.
“When?”
“After the ambulance left.”
“We know that.”
“No.”
Daniel’s voice lowered.
“She asked whether Claire had taken her folder with her.”
Nobody in the room moved.
Bell looked at me.
“What folder?”
“The one from court.”
I pulled it closer from the chair beside my bed.
The folder suddenly felt heavier than paper.
“What’s in it?”
Bell asked.
“Medical records.”
“Photos.”
“Messages.”
I stopped.
There was one thing I had forgotten.
A folded pharmacy receipt Patricia had dropped at my house two months earlier.
I had kept it because one of the medications listed was unfamiliar and I had intended to ask her whether she needed it back.
My hands shook as I opened the folder.
Court filings slid across the blanket.
Photographs.
School records.
Printed texts.
Then the receipt.
I unfolded it.
Dr. Marquez leaned closer.
Bell returned from the doorway.
At the bottom, beneath Patricia’s blood pressure medication and something for cholesterol, was a third item.
It was not arsenic.
It was not poison.
It was a prescription used to treat heavy-metal exposure.
Bell read the name twice.
Dr. Marquez went very still.
I looked from the receipt to Daniel’s silent call.
Patricia had not merely known what heavy-metal poisoning looked like.
At some point before I ever collapsed in court, she had obtained medication commonly used when someone had already been exposed to it.
Bell’s eyes moved from the receipt to Dr. Marquez.
“What is it?”
She took the paper carefully by the edges.
“It’s a chelating agent.”
“For what?”
“Certain heavy-metal exposures.”
Bell looked back at me.
“Would Patricia have a reason to take this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Any diagnosed condition?”
“Not that I know of.”
Dr. Marquez read the date.
“When was this filled?”
I leaned closer.
“May eighteenth.”
Dr. Shah checked something on his tablet.
“That’s during the period when your symptoms were already active.”
My stomach turned.
Bell held out his hand.
“I need to preserve this.”
I gave him the receipt.
He slid it into a clear evidence sleeve from his jacket pocket, then wrote the time across the seal.
The gesture was so routine that it frightened me.
Daniel was still on speaker.
“What did you find?”
I looked at the phone.
“A prescription.”
“For what?”
“Treatment after heavy-metal exposure.”
There was a long silence.
Then Daniel said, “No.”
Not disbelief.
Refusal.
The kind of no people use when the world has crossed a line they cannot follow.
Bell picked up the phone.
“Mr. Whitaker, do you know whether your mother has ever been treated for exposure to metals, pesticides, industrial chemicals, anything similar?”
“No.”
“Could she have gotten this medication for someone else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she ever complain about numbness, stomach problems, weakness?”
“She complains about everything.”
His voice tightened.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
Bell ignored the defensiveness.
“Did she have a doctor who treated her regularly?”
“Dr. Levin.”
“First name?”
“Samuel, I think.”
“Clinic?”
“North County Internal Medicine.”
Bell wrote it down.
“Do you know where your mother is?”
May you like
“No.”
“Did she tell you she was going anywhere after court?”
