Chương 5
“I was there.”
“So what decision are you afraid of?”
He turned.
“The one where my entire family is over.”
Rachel stared at him.
“Our entire family was at that table.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
This time the words came softly.
David sank into the chair by the window.
“My father’s dead. My sister barely talks to her. She’s—”
“Your mother.”
“Yes.”
“And Sophie is your daughter.”
His face twisted.
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
Rachel said nothing.
David looked down at his hands.
“When I was eight, I broke my wrist falling off a retaining wall. My dad was out of town. Mom carried me three blocks because the car wouldn’t start. She sat on the floor next to my bed all night after they put the cast on.”
Rachel listened.
“She was the person who showed up,” he said. “For everything. School conferences. College move-in. When my dad got sick, she basically lived at the hospital. When Lucas was born, she stocked our freezer for two months.”
“And tonight?”
He looked at her.
Rachel did not need to finish.
His eyes filled, but no tears fell.
“That’s what I’m trying to understand.”
Rachel’s anger softened enough to become something worse.
Pity.
She did not want to pity him.
She sat beside him anyway.
For a few moments, their shoulders touched.
Then Sophie woke and asked for water.
By sunrise, the story had become a record.
There was Sophie’s medical chart.
There was the officer’s report.
There were photographs taken at Eleanor’s house.
There was the jar.
There was Lucas’s statement.
There was the bakery order.
There were the unanswered calls from Eleanor.
There was also, David learned from Officer Bennett, a partially cleaned dessert plate in Eleanor’s kitchen sink.
The birthday cake remained on the dining table.
The cloche and tray had been moved.
Not far.
Only onto the sideboard.
Eleanor told the responding officers she had moved them because broken glass was on the floor.
She said she had not cleaned the plate.
She said perhaps Rachel had.
Rachel had been in an ambulance.
When Bennett relayed this, she did not offer an interpretation.
She did not have to.
David stared at the floor.
Sophie was discharged shortly after nine in the morning with instructions, follow-up plans, and replacement prescriptions.
Outside the hospital, the morning was offensively beautiful.
Blue sky.
Warm sunlight.
A man in scrubs was drinking coffee beside the parking garage and complaining into his phone about somebody borrowing his truck.
Rachel stood on the sidewalk while David went to bring the car around.
Lucas held Sophie’s sweater.
Sophie looked at the street.
“Do I have school tomorrow?”
Rachel blinked.
“It’s Saturday.”
“Oh.”
“Also no.”
Sophie nodded.
“Good.”
Lucas handed her the sweater.
She did not put it on.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Can we go home?”
Rachel looked at her children.
“Our home?”
Sophie frowned.
“Where else?”
Rachel almost said Grandma’s house.
She did not.
“Yes,” she said. “We’re going home.”
The birthday presents stayed unopened for two days.
Rachel put them in the guest room because Sophie did not want to see them.
The cake never came home.
Neither did Eleanor’s gift.
David threw the bag away in a hospital trash can before they left.
On Sunday morning, Rachel found him standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open.
“What are you doing?”
He looked at the shelves.
“Nothing.”
“You’re letting everything get warm.”
He closed the door.
For the first time since the hospital, he smiled.
“Your mother used to say that.”
“My mother says normal irritating things.”
He flinched.
Rachel regretted it immediately.
“Sorry.”
“No. It’s fine.”
“It wasn’t.”
He leaned against the counter.
They had slept in the same bed the night before without touching. Rachel had woken three times because she thought she heard Sophie coughing.
Each time she went to Sophie’s room.
Each time Sophie was asleep.
The third time, Rachel found David already standing in the hallway.
They had looked at each other in the dark and returned to bed without speaking.
Now David picked up a banana from the fruit bowl.
He put it back.
“Bennett called.”
“When?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
Rachel waited.
“They want to speak to my mother again with her attorney present.”
“Good.”
“She has an attorney.”
“Of course she does.”
David’s face tightened.
“What does that mean?”
“It means your mother has money and knows how to use it.”
“Rachel.”
“I’m not criticizing her for having a lawyer.”
“You sounded like you were.”
“I’m criticizing her for nearly killing Sophie.”
David went still.
Rachel saw the words hit him.
She had used variations of them in her own mind for forty-eight hours, but she had never said them aloud to him.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Say she tried to kill her.”
“I didn’t.”
“You said—”
“I said she nearly killed her.”
“That’s not the same thing?”
“No. It isn’t.”
David looked away.
Rachel stepped closer.
“I don’t know what your mother intended. I know what she did.”
“Lucas says she mixed something into the cake.”
“Why are you still saying Lucas says?”
His head came back toward her.
“Because that’s what we have.”
“We have an open jar of almond cream under the cloche.”
“We have a jar.”
“We have Sophie saying Eleanor told her the cake was safe.”
“I know.”
“We have your mother trying to move the cloche.”
“I know.”
“We have her telling Lucas he wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“I know.”
“Then say it.”
“Say what?”
“That she did it.”
David’s face hardened.
“I’m not going to convict my mother in our kitchen.”
“This isn’t a courtroom.”
“Exactly.”
Rachel stared at him.
There it was.
Not disbelief.
Resistance.
A narrow, painful strip of ground between what he could see and what he could bear to name.
She stepped back.
“Okay.”
“Rachel.”
“No, okay.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Shut down.”
“I’m not shutting down.”
May you like
“You are.”
She opened the cabinet and took out a mug.
