Chương 2
“Who called?”
“I did.” Connor turned Frederick toward the paramedics. “He’s one. High fever. Breathing fast. He’s barely responding.”
A paramedic reached for the child. Connor let go reluctantly and immediately felt the absence of his son’s heat against his chest.
The officer stepped between Teresa and the medical team.
“Ma’am, give them room.”
“You need to leave,” Teresa said. “This is a private family celebration.”
“We’re responding to an emergency call.”
“There is no emergency.”
Frederick’s head lolled while a paramedic placed a small oxygen sensor around his foot. Amy covered her mouth. The second paramedic asked when the baby had last had fluids.
Amy looked at Teresa before answering.
The lead officer saw it.
“Ma’am,” he said to Teresa, “step outside with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then stand over there.”
She tried to pass him. He blocked her with one forearm held low, not touching her, only occupying the space.
Teresa shoved him with both hands.
The kitchen went silent except for running water and Frederick’s frightened, rasping breath.
The officer caught Teresa’s wrist, turned her without throwing her off balance, and brought her hands behind her back. The tequila glass fell and broke. She shouted his badge number before she could possibly have read it. Metal handcuffs closed around her wrists.
At the edge of the room, Mason moved.
Connor might not have noticed if Mason had walked normally. Instead, his cousin pressed one elbow against the beige jacket hanging over his dark shirt and slipped toward the front hallway with the cautious speed of a man trying to appear unhurried.
The second officer called after him.
“Sir. Stop.”
Mason kept going.
The officer caught up beside the pantry. “Hands where I can see them.”
“I’m just leaving.”
“What’s under your jacket?”
“Nothing.”
The brown corner of a legal folder slid below the hem.
Mason closed his eyes.
The officer removed the folder and opened it on the kitchen counter. Inside lay the original warranty deed to Connor and Amy’s house, several photocopies of their driver’s licenses, pages bearing practice versions of Connor’s signature, and an unsigned property-transfer form clipped beneath a sheet of handwritten instructions.
Connor stared at the deed. It had been stored in a fireproof box in the bedroom closet.
Teresa stopped fighting the handcuffs.
That silence was worse than her shouting.
The officer looked at Connor. “Is this yours?”
Connor could see the blue recording stamp from the county office, the crease in the corner where Amy had once dropped it while they were arranging their mortgage papers, and the faint pencil line he had made beside the legal description because he had not understood it.
“Yes.”
Mason began talking too quickly. “She told me to hold it. That’s all. She said it belonged to the family and she didn’t want Amy hiding it.”
Amy sank onto the small plastic stool beside the sink.
Teresa twisted toward him. “Shut your mouth.”
The paramedic supporting Frederick raised his voice. “We’re transporting now.”
Connor reached for Amy, but she recoiled before recognizing him. Then she took his hand.
Outside, relatives moved aside as the paramedics carried Frederick through a yard decorated for him. The music had stopped. Balloons dragged their ribbons through spilled drinks. A little girl stood beside the cake table holding a paper plate and staring at the ambulance. Someone had left the grill open, and smoke rolled toward the fence.
Teresa came out behind them in handcuffs, still insisting the house belonged to her.
Connor helped Amy into the ambulance. As he climbed after her, he looked back through the open kitchen doors.
The white cake box sat crooked on the counter. One corner had collapsed from the impact. The gift bag lay on its side beside it, the folded blue dress partly visible, along with the silver chain of an F-shaped pendant he had chosen during his lunch break three weeks earlier.
The dry bread remained on the wet floor.
At the hospital, no one gave Connor a single word that explained everything.
They gave him numbers instead. Frederick’s temperature. His oxygen level. His heart rate. The amount of fluid they planned to give him. The number of wet diapers Amy could remember since morning, which was one, although she kept questioning herself until the nurse asked her to stop trying to produce a better answer.
A physician listened to Frederick’s chest and said the breathing might be caused by fever and dehydration but ordered tests because the child was lethargic. A nurse cut off the light-blue romper after Amy could not work the snaps with her shaking fingers. Frederick cried when they placed the intravenous line. It was the strongest sound he had made since Connor arrived home, and everyone in the room seemed relieved to hear him suffer loudly.
Amy stood against the wall, hugging herself.
“You should sit,” Connor said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
Her face changed.
He regretted the words immediately. Teresa had used that tone: a conclusion disguised as concern.
Connor moved a chair toward her but did not tell her again. After a moment, Amy sat because she chose to. She stared at Frederick’s bare feet while the clear fluid moved down the tube.
A nurse brought her water and crackers. Amy drank too quickly, then coughed and apologized.
“Nothing to apologize for,” the nurse said.
Amy apologized again.
May you like
Connor washed dried tequila from his forearm in the small sink. Dust from the construction site had settled into the lines around his knuckles. He had left work early because the birthday cake shop closed at four, and he had spent the drive home irritated with traffic, thinking about a drainage calculation he needed to correct before morning. He had believed he was doing something good. A cake. A pendant. A dress for Amy because she had once stopped beside a store window and touched a similar blue sleeve.
He had carried those things into a house where his wife was eating bread over a sink.
