Chương 3
“I know.”
“My father can’t just take our house.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes.
My anger had found the wrong person and knew it, but anger was not particularly interested in fairness.
“Send me everything.”
“I’m coming to the hospital.”
“No.”
“What?”
I heard myself breathing.
If Tessa came, Dad would see her.
Daniel might talk to her.
My mother knew Tessa’s husband, her office, her parents, probably the name of her childhood dentist if she had ever bothered to ask.
I suddenly didn’t know what information was safe simply because it belonged to someone I loved.
“Wait,” I said.
“Claire, I am not leaving you there alone with those people.”
“They’ve been removed.”
“Removed how?”
“Security.”
Another silence.
Then Tessa said, very softly, “What did they do?”
I looked at the severed strip of fabric lying beside the bed.
“They tried to make decisions for me.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“No.”
“All right.”
Her voice changed.
Tessa was a terrible liar but excellent in emergencies, perhaps because emergencies gave her no time to invent possibilities.
“I’ll wait until you tell me to come.”
“Send the pictures first.”
“They’re coming.”
My phone chimed.
Six photographs appeared.
The first showed Dad beside a black SUV in my driveway.
The second showed the locksmith.
The third showed Thomas Mercer standing on my front porch in a charcoal suit, holding a folder against his chest.
In the fourth, Daniel was opening our front door for him.
I stopped breathing for a second.
Daniel had told me he had stayed at the hospital all night.
The timestamp beneath the photograph read 9:18 a.m.
The fifth picture showed my father speaking to the locksmith.
The sixth showed Thomas holding something white.
Not a folder this time.
An envelope.
My name was written across the front.
Even through the photograph, I recognized the handwriting.
It was mine.
For a few seconds, I could not make my thumb move.
I enlarged the photograph until the envelope filled the screen and the pixels began to soften around the edges.
The C in Claire leaned too far forward, the way mine always did when I signed quickly.
There was a dark hook beneath the final e where my pen usually hesitated before lifting.
Tessa said my name through the phone, but I barely heard her.
“Where did they get that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see him open it?”
“No.”
“Did you see what was inside?”
“No, and I wasn’t exactly invited onto the porch.”
I swiped back to the photograph of Daniel opening our front door.
He was wearing the same pale gray shirt he had worn beside my hospital bed.
His sleeves were rolled to his elbows in the picture.
At the hospital, they had been buttoned at his wrists.
A stupid detail.
A useless detail.
I stared at it anyway.
“What happened after this?”
“They all went inside.”
“How long?”
“Maybe forty minutes.”
“You stayed?”
“I sat in my car like a lunatic and pretended to be on a conference call.”
That sounded like Tessa.
“Then Mercer left first, your father left, and Daniel talked to the locksmith.”
“What did the locksmith do?”
“Changed the front lock.”
My stomach tightened.
“Our keypad too?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
I looked toward the closed hospital door.
“Did Daniel leave?”
“He drove away.”
“What time?”
“A little after ten.”
Daniel had been sitting beside me when I woke around eleven, holding a paper cup of coffee and telling me he had never left.
I opened my mouth, but no words came.
Marisol quietly moved the wastebasket away from the side of the bed and pulled a chair closer.
“I’m still here,” Tessa said.
“I know.”
“What do you need?”
The question almost broke me.
Not because it was complicated, but because nobody had asked it since I fell.
“I need you to save those pictures somewhere besides your phone.”
“Already did.”
“Where?”
“My work cloud account and Martin’s laptop.”
“Don’t tell anyone else.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t come here yet.”
A pause.
“Okay.”
“Thank you.”
“Claire.”
“What?”
“I’m going to say one annoying thing.”
I waited.
“If you change your mind, I’m ten minutes away.”
“You’re twenty minutes away.”
“Not how I drive.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
It vanished quickly.
“Stay alive, please.”
“That was the annoying thing?”
“No, that was the friendship thing.”
I ended the call before my voice could give me away.
Marisol held out a plastic cup with a straw.
“Small sip.”
I drank.
The water tasted faintly of ice machine metal.
“Do you have someone safe?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“That sounded uncertain.”
“I’m reevaluating my standards.”
She nodded as if that was an acceptable medical response.
A knock came at the door.
Marisol opened it only a few inches.
A woman introduced herself as Dr. Patel, and behind her stood a hospital social worker named Renee Foster.
Marisol asked me if I wanted both of them inside.
“Yes.”
She asked if I wanted anyone else.
“No.”
That simple exchange mattered more than it should have.
Dr. Patel was in her forties, with tired eyes and a navy scrub cap covered in tiny orange flowers.
She sat rather than standing over me.
“I’ve reviewed your chart,” she said.
“I’m going to tell you what is documented, and when I’m not certain, I’ll tell you that too.”
“Was I drugged?”
Her eyes lifted from the tablet.
“You received medication for pain and nausea after your fall.”
“Anything to make me sleep?”
“There is a sedating medication documented at one thirty-eight this morning.”
“Why?”
“That’s one of the things I’m trying to clarify.”
Renee stopped writing.
“What medication?”
Dr. Patel named it, then added, “The dose is within normal therapeutic use, but the indication entered in the chart is agitation.”
“I wasn’t agitated.”
“You may not remember all of that period.”
“Who said I was?”
May you like
“The note says family reported that you were attempting to leave despite medical advice.”
“My husband tied me to the bed.”
