Chương 3
Nothing in Lily’s face had suggested she planned to leave school.
“What did the authorization say?” Claire asked.
Ortiz took a breath before answering. “It said her father had arranged for her to attend a dental appointment.”
Claire’s first response was stupidly practical.
“She had one last month.”
Ortiz waited.
“Grant sent it?”
“The login came from his account.”
“The same account that released the SUV?”
“No. Different systems.”
“But his credentials.”
“Yes.”
Naomi stepped closer to Claire. “You need to sit back.”
“I am sitting.”
“You’re leaning over like you’re going to fall.”
Claire straightened. Pain shot through her lower spine. She had been in the same chair for so long that her left foot had gone numb, but she had not noticed until then.
“Did he take her out of school?” she asked.
“We don’t know whether he personally entered the authorization.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because credentials are not people.”
Claire looked at the detective’s belt, at the badge clipped beneath the blazer, at the black elastic around her wrist. “But people give credentials to other people.”
“Yes.”
“Vanessa?”
“Possibly.”
The word opened a worse possibility than Claire had prepared herself to hold.
“Why would Vanessa want Lily out of school?”
Ortiz did not answer.
Claire heard Lily inhale, a thin uneven pull through the oxygen tube. She immediately bent over her.
“Baby, I’m here.”
Lily did not wake.
Ortiz lowered her voice. “We need to understand why Lily went to Northstar’s downtown office.”
“She went there?”
“The collision occurred on Addison, outside the east entrance to Northstar’s garage.”
Claire had driven past that building hundreds of times. Forty stories of tinted blue glass, the company name mounted in stainless steel over the revolving doors. Grant had worked there for nine years, first in regional operations and then as chief strategy officer. Lily called it Dad’s aquarium because the lobby fountain made everyone’s shoes sound wet.
“Was she hit crossing the street?”
“She was near the garage exit.”
“Near?”
“We’re still reconstructing her movement.”
“Was she going in or coming out?”
“We don’t know.”
Claire stared at Ortiz until the detective looked away first, not from guilt but because a nurse opened the door to ask about medication orders.
The interruption lasted less than a minute. Claire used it to adjust the charcoal cardigan around her shoulders. She had worn it to the grocery store because the morning was cool. There was a dried smear of Lily’s blood near the cuff. A nurse had offered to find her something clean hours ago, but Claire had refused. She could not explain why. Changing clothes felt like admitting the day had become long enough to require another version of her.
When Ortiz turned back, Claire said, “Grant told me she was hit near school.”
“Did he?”
“He said the ambulance picked her up six blocks from school.”
The school was more than two miles from Northstar.
“Do you still have that message?” Ortiz asked.
“It was a phone call.”
“Did anyone hear it?”
“I was in the grocery store.”
“Think carefully.”
“A cashier heard part of it. I dropped the peas. She helped me pick them up.”
Ortiz took out a small notebook. “Which store?”
Claire told her.
“Do you remember the cashier’s name?”
“No. She had purple glasses. There was a tattoo on her wrist. A bee, maybe.”
Ortiz wrote it down.
Claire almost apologized for not knowing more. Then anger returned and saved her.
“You were already investigating Grant when you came upstairs.”
“We began investigating inconsistencies.”
“You let him sit beside her all night.”
“We did not have grounds to remove him.”
“He held her hand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He told her he loved her.”
Ortiz closed the notebook. “That may still be true.”
Claire looked at her sharply.
The detective did not flinch. “People can love someone and still fail them in ways that are difficult to understand.”
“Is that what you tell families?”
“No. It’s what I’ve learned from them.”
Naomi adjusted the blanket near Lily’s feet. She did it gently, but the gesture carried a quiet warning that the conversation had gone far enough.
Ortiz handed Claire a card. “Call me when the doctors say she can answer questions. I won’t speak to her without arranging it with the hospital’s child specialist.”
“She already asked the question that matters.”
“Her father’s answer may not be the only one.”
After Ortiz left, Claire remained motionless.
Naomi pulled the empty visitor chair closer and sat in it. She had a narrow face and a small silver stud in one nostril. A coffee stain darkened the hem of her scrub top.
“You should drink something,” she said.
“I’m not thirsty.”
“I wasn’t asking about thirst.”
Claire lifted the paper cup Naomi had placed near her elbow earlier. The water tasted faintly of plastic. She swallowed twice.
“My husband may have helped someone cover up hitting my child.”
Naomi looked at the monitor rather than at Claire. “That’s what it sounds like.”
“People keep saying they don’t know.”
“I’m not a detective.”
“No.”
“I’ve also been awake for thirteen hours, and I don’t have the energy to pretend words mean something else.”
The bluntness steadied Claire.
Naomi rubbed her palms over her knees. “My brother stole money from my mother when she had cancer. She still loved him. She also changed the locks.”
Claire stared at her.
“I’m not comparing,” Naomi said. “I say dumb things when I’m tired.”
“No. It’s all right.”
“It probably isn’t.”
For the first time since the police arrived, Claire smiled. It lasted less than a second.
Naomi stood when an alarm sounded in the neighboring room. “Don’t let anyone rush you into deciding what your family is now. People love doing that. They make a terrible thing happen and then ask the person bleeding to define it.”
May you like
After she left, Claire watched Lily sleep.
At eight in the morning, the hospital’s family-services coordinator brought a toothbrush, travel toothpaste, deodorant, gray sweatpants, and a T-shirt with the Lakeview Children’s logo. Claire changed in the private bathroom without turning on the overhead light. Under the harsh mirror lamp, she examined her face.
