Chương 14
“I want to sleep.”
Ortiz stood.
“Then sleep.”
“Will you tell me before you talk to Elena again?”
“I can update you when appropriate.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
I looked at her.
She looked back.
Finally I nodded.
“Okay.”
She left her card on the table and went out.
Claire pulled the chair closer.
“I’m staying.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“You have work.”
“I called in.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That my sister was in the hospital.”
“Did they ask why?”
“My boss asked if you were dying.”
I opened my eyes.
“What did you say?”
“I said not if she could help it.”
“That’s terrible.”
“He’s terrible.”
I almost smiled.
Claire took off her coat and folded it over the chair.
Underneath, she wore an old college sweatshirt with a bleach stain near the cuff.
I recognized it.
I had stolen it from her once when we were nineteen.
She had accused me for six months.
“You still have that?”
She looked down.
“Apparently.”
“I thought you threw it out.”
“I said I threw it out.”
“Why?”
“Because you kept asking to borrow it.”
There she was.
Petty.
Irritating.
Mine.
I closed my eyes.
The room did not feel safe.
Not completely.
Safety was too large a word.
But the door was unlocked.
Nurses came in when alarms sounded.
My sister was snoring softly in a vinyl chair before nine in the morning.
The baby’s heartbeat filled the space between us.
For the first time in months, I fell asleep without listening for footsteps on the stairs.
I woke to Claire whispering fiercely into her phone near the window.
“No, Mom, she is alive.”
She turned and saw my eyes open.
Her expression collapsed from anger into relief.
“Yes, she is awake.”
I held out my hand.
Claire hesitated, then passed me the phone.
My mother’s voice arrived before I could say hello.
“Rachel?”
I closed my eyes.
“Hi, Mom.”
She made a sound I had never heard from her.
Not crying exactly.
Something lower.
“Where are you?”
“In the hospital.”
“I know that.”
Her voice shook.
“I mean where are you in there?”
“Labor and delivery.”
“I’m coming.”
“Mom.”
“I am already packing.”
“Mom.”
“What?”
“I don’t want everyone here.”
Silence.
The old version of me would have softened the sentence immediately.
I would have explained.
Apologized.
Made her rejection smaller so she would not feel rejected.
I did not.
“I need it quiet.”
My mother breathed into the phone.
Then she said, “Okay.”
Claire looked surprised.
“So don’t come yet.”
“Okay.”
“You can call later.”
“Okay.”
Three simple answers.
No argument.
No guilt.
I almost cried again.
Then my mother ruined it in the most comforting possible way.
“Is Claire feeding you hospital pudding?”
Claire snatched the phone.
“She has not been cleared for pudding.”
“That is not what I asked.”
I smiled into the pillow.
Their argument continued while a nurse checked the monitors.
The baby’s heartbeat remained steady.
My contractions had slowed while I slept.
Not stopped.
Slowed.
Dr. Feld came in after noon and told me they were cautiously encouraged.
I had started to hate cautious encouragement.
It sounded like hope wearing protective equipment.
Still, I took it.
By evening, the contractions were irregular enough that the room relaxed around me.
Claire found a deck of cards in the family lounge.
We played gin rummy badly.
She accused me of cheating.
I accused her of inventing rules.
Neither accusation was true.
The point was that for twenty minutes, no one said Daniel’s name.
Then Ortiz arrived with another detective and the outside world came back in.
She asked whether I felt able to talk.
I almost said yes automatically.
Then I looked at the monitor.
At Claire.
At the untouched soup on my tray.
“No.”
Ortiz nodded.
“Okay.”
The ease of it startled me.
“I mean not tonight.”
“Not tonight.”
“Is it important?”
“Yes.”
That complicated things.
“What kind of important?”
“The kind that will still be important tomorrow.”
I let out a breath.
“Tomorrow.”
She agreed.
Before leaving, she said one thing.
“Elena has decided to give a full statement.”
I looked at her.
“Because of me?”
“Because she says she’s tired of being afraid of him.”
That answer stayed with me through the night.
Not because of me.
Because of herself.
I understood that better than I would have a week earlier.
The next morning, Dr. Feld told me they believed the immediate risk of delivery had decreased.
She refused to call me safe.
I had stopped asking for that word anyway.
Later, Ortiz returned with a prosecutor named Dana Price, who wore a navy suit and carried a legal pad covered in handwriting.
Dana did not begin by telling me what charges she wanted.
She began by explaining what she did not know yet.
Toxicology was incomplete.
Device analysis would take time.
Financial records were still being traced.
Some digital accounts appeared to use pseudonyms.
Some viewers might never be identified.
Daniel and Marlene had attorneys.
Nothing would move quickly just because the evidence looked ugly.
I listened.
This version of justice was slower than the one I had imagined upstairs.
Less satisfying.
More believable.
“What about the recordings I made?”
Dana glanced at Ortiz.
“They are significant.”
“Significant enough?”
“For what?”
“To make them stop saying I agreed.”
Her expression softened, but not into pity.
“They can say whatever they want.”
“I don’t want them to.”
“I know.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
I looked down at my hands.
Dana continued.
“What matters is what evidence supports.”
That became the phrase I carried for the next few months.
Not what people said.
Not what Marlene claimed.
Not what Daniel texted.
What evidence supported.
The hospital kept me for five days.
I did not have the baby.
May you like
When I left, Claire drove me to her apartment because I refused every suggestion that involved my house.
The first night there, I slept on her couch with three lamps on.
