Chương 2
“You need pain medication.”
“After the calls.”
She looked at me for several seconds. “Are you military?”
I had not realized my identification card was visible inside my wallet.
“Yes.”
“Active duty?”
“Yes.”
She pushed the rolling tray closer. “Make one call while I start the line. Then you can make the second after the medication is in.”
“That sounds like a negotiation.”
“It isn’t.”
The first person I called was not Ethan.
Colonel Daniel Park answered on the second ring. He supervised protective security for the program I directed, and he had the unsettling habit of sounding fully awake at any hour.
“Hayes.”
“Dan, I have a residential security breach.”
The nurse slid a needle into my right arm.
Park heard the change in my breathing. “Are you injured?”
“Burned. Nonaccidental.”
“Where are you?”
I gave him the clinic’s name.
“What was breached?”
“My office circuit is down. A replacement authentication unit was delivered this morning. An unauthorized resident handled the package. I left it in the house.”
There was a pause, not long enough to be hesitation. Park was rearranging the problem.
“Does the resident know what it is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who is the resident?”
“My husband’s mother.”
The nurse looked at me, then pretended to check the tape on the IV.
Park said, “I need you to stop talking over an unsecured line. I’m notifying the duty officer and sending someone to you. Do not return to the house.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Lauren.”
His use of my first name meant he had heard something I had not intended to reveal.
“I’m all right,” I said.
“No, you’re not. Stay where you are.”
The second call was to my attorney, Nisha Patel.
She had handled the purchase of my house, the drafting of my prenuptial agreement, and one regrettable dispute with a contractor who installed six windows backward and insisted they were European.
When she answered, I heard a coffee grinder.
“Please tell me you’re calling because you finally decided to refinance.”
“Margaret assaulted me.”
The grinder stopped.
“What do you mean, assaulted?”
“She threw boiling water on me.”
A cupboard closed on her end.
“Where are you?”
I told her.
“Have you called the police?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I had to notify security.”
“Security for work?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Lauren, listen to me. You’re going to make the police report. You’re going to let the doctors photograph everything. You are not going home, and you are not negotiating with Ethan about whether his mother meant it.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You have known many things for a long time and acted on approximately none of them.”
The medicine entered my bloodstream with a warm, loosening pressure.
“Nisha.”
“I’m not scolding you. I’m furious, which is different.”
“It sounds similar.”
“I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
The ambulance arrived while a police officer was taking my initial statement. He was young enough to say “ma’am” every third sentence and careful enough not to dismiss the story when I told him Margaret had ordered me out of my own home.
“Who owns the residence?” he asked.
“I do.”
“Jointly with your husband?”
“No.”
He lowered his pen. “Your mother-in-law told you to leave a house she doesn’t own?”
“Yes.”
“Does she live there?”
“She has been staying with us for eleven months.”
That complicated his expression.
“Was there an agreement?”
“Temporary permission. No lease. She receives mail there.”
“We’ll need to sort out occupancy rights separately. The assault is separate from that.”
“I understand.”
“Any weapons in the home?”
“One secured personal handgun in a safe. Government equipment in a protected workspace. No weapons accessible to her as far as I know.”
The officer glanced toward the doorway, where two plainclothes military investigators had appeared beside Colonel Park.
The taller investigator gave him a small nod.
The officer looked back at me. “This may be above my morning.”
“It’s still your assault case,” I said. “Nothing about my employment changes that.”
He studied me, perhaps expecting arrogance and finding only a woman wrapped in a clinic sheet with half her shirt cut away.
“All right,” he said. “Then we’ll treat it that way.”
Ethan called while the ambulance crew adjusted the straps on the stretcher.
His name filled the screen.
I watched it ring until voicemail answered.
He called again before we reached the hospital.
By then the pain medication had made the ceiling lights slide softly past one another. I declined the call and opened the location-sharing app we used. Ethan was at his office downtown.
Margaret had not called him before I left. She had probably called the moment the garage door closed.
His third call came with a text.
Mom says you two had a fight. Where are you?
The wording made something inside me go still.
Not Mom says she hurt you.
Not Are you safe?
A fight.
I handed the phone to Park, who sat beside the ambulance doors in a dark civilian suit.
“Take a screenshot,” I said.
He did.
“Do you want me to reply?”
“No.”
“Lauren, your husband may need to be interviewed.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Nisha said the same thing.”
“Patel usually charges for being right.”
Park had met her once and remained slightly afraid of her.
At the military medical center, they cleaned the burns, debrided damaged skin, photographed the injuries, and covered my shoulder and chest with a thin silver dressing. The physician recommended admission for observation because of the location and extent of the burns.
I argued for nine minutes.
Then I vomited into a basin and lost the argument.
May you like
Nisha arrived carrying my overnight bag, a phone charger, and a legal pad already divided into columns. She wore navy slacks, running shoes, and an expression that made a resident step aside without being asked.
“I brought you a clean shirt,” she said. “It buttons in front. I also brought the deed, the prenuptial agreement, proof of insurance, and every message you sent me about Margaret’s residency.”
