Chương 3
He spun toward her.
“Not helping.”
My skin went cold.
“What transfer?”
Vanessa looked at me, then at him.
“I don’t know the details.”
“You knew enough to come here and tell me Holly’s money belonged to your baby.”
“That is not what I said.”
“You stood beside him while he said it.”
Her eyes filled, but I had no patience left for tears that arrived after cruelty.
Derek stepped toward the door again.
Leah blocked him without touching him.
“Sir, if you leave this room, you leave the unit.”
He stared at her.
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m explaining the choice.”
Calvin’s voice came through my phone.
“Marissa, I need facts.”
I swallowed.
“So do I.”
“Ask whether he accessed the education account.”
I looked at Derek.
“Did you take money from Holly’s college account?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
Calvin heard it.
“Ask about the joint emergency account.”
“Did you take money from that?”
Derek rubbed the back of his neck.
“It’s a joint account.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I moved some money.”
“How much?”
“Marissa.”
“How much?”
He looked at Vanessa.
She whispered, “Tell her.”
His jaw tightened.
“Forty-eight.”
For one stupid second, I thought he meant forty-eight hundred.
Then I saw his face.
“Forty-eight thousand dollars?”
“It wasn’t stolen.”
My knees nearly gave out.
I gripped the bed rail.
Calvin said my name once, sharply.
“I’m here.”
“Which institution holds the joint account?”
I told him.
“I’ll have my office send you instructions tonight.”
“I thought you were retired.”
“I’m retired from taking new clients.”
A dry breath came through the phone.
“I never retired from your mother.”
Derek laughed under his breath.
“This is unbelievable.”
I turned on him.
“What did you need forty-eight thousand dollars for?”
He folded his arms.
“Expenses.”
“What expenses?”
“A deposit.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
I looked at her.
“A deposit on what?”
She said nothing.
“Vanessa.”
“A house.”
The word barely came out.
I stared at my sister.
“You bought a house?”
“We put an offer on one.”
“Where?”
“Marissa, please.”
“Where?”
“Westfield.”
I knew Westfield.
New developments, oversized kitchens, school districts people bragged about before their children could read.
Derek had mocked the neighborhood for years, calling it a place where people financed their identities.
Apparently he had changed his mind once he needed a second family.
“You used our emergency fund for a house with my sister.”
Derek’s expression hardened.
“It’s my money too.”
“That account exists because I worked nights while you changed careers three times.”
“I contributed.”
“You contributed eight months of salary in nine years.”
“That’s not how marriage works.”
“No.”
My voice shook now.
“Apparently marriage works by sleeping with my sister and draining the emergency account while my child is in oncology.”
Holly moved.
It was only a small twitch of her hand, but every adult in the room froze.
I turned to her.
Her eyelids fluttered.
Leah moved immediately to the bedside and checked the monitor.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
Holly’s eyes opened halfway.
She looked at me first.
Then at Derek.
Her voice could not come through the tube, but her forehead wrinkled.
I took her hand.
“It’s okay.”
It was an absurd thing to say.
Nothing was okay.
She squeezed my fingers once.
Derek stepped closer.
“Holly.”
Her eyes shifted toward him.
Something in his face softened.
I hated that it did.
I would have preferred a monster because monsters were easier to leave.
For one second he looked like the father who used to carry her asleep from the car and complain that her legs got longer every week.
Then Holly shut her eyes again.
Leah checked her medication line.
“She needs rest.”
Derek stood there a moment longer.
Vanessa watched him with an expression I could not read.
Then she quietly picked up her coat.
“I’m going home.”
Derek looked at her.
“We came together.”
“I’ll get a ride.”
“Vanessa.”
She put on her coat without answering.
I almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it.
My family was collapsing in a pediatric hospital room, and my sister was carefully buttoning a camel-colored coat because that was what people did when they did not know where to put their hands.
At the door, she stopped.
“I didn’t know about the treatment.”
I stared at her.
“What did you think we were discussing all day?”
“I knew there was something in Boston.”
“Something.”
“He said the doctors had basically told you there was no chance.”
I looked at Derek.
He stared at the floor.
“He told you that?”
Vanessa nodded.
“He said you were refusing to accept it.”
My throat tightened.
Derek muttered, “That’s not what I said.”
“Yes, it is.”
She turned on him with sudden anger.
“You said the Boston thing was some private clinic selling hope to desperate parents.”
Dr. Patel had spent forty minutes explaining trial eligibility, risks, and the difference between established treatment and compassionate-use pathways.
Derek had been invited to that meeting.
He had said he was too busy.
“What else did he tell you?” I asked.
Vanessa looked exhausted.
“That the money couldn’t change anything.”
Derek threw up his hands.
“Oh, come on.”
“That you and Marissa were already separated in everything but paperwork.”
“We were.”
“No, we weren’t,” I said.
He faced me.
“You hadn’t spoken to me like a wife in a year.”
Our daughter’s monitor beeped between us.
The ugliness of the sentence hung there.
I almost answered it with something equally cruel.
Instead I looked down at Holly’s fingers.
There were tiny flecks of silver nail polish on two nails from the manicure a volunteer had given her the previous week.
“You can blame our marriage on me later,” I said.
“You don’t get to blame what you did with her money on me.”
Derek’s mouth tightened.
Vanessa opened the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I said home.”
“Our home?”
She stared at him.
“I don’t know anymore.”
May you like
Then she left.
Derek looked after her like he had just discovered consequences could have more than one direction.
