Chương 4
“He called you a brat?”
Lily shrugged weakly.
“Not exactly.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Don’t be difficult like your mom.’”
Claire looked toward the ceiling.
“That sounds more like him.”
Sarah turned to her.
Claire’s face was white.
“How long have you known he talks about you like that?”
“I didn’t.”
“You just said—”
“I said it sounds like him.”
“Why?”
Claire’s expression hardened.
“Because he has said it to me.”
The door opened.
A nurse entered with a small plastic cup and froze for an instant at the tension in the room.
“Bad time?”
Claire laughed once.
“There hasn’t been a good one.”
The nurse checked Lily’s monitor.
Sarah stood because she suddenly could not sit.
Her phone vibrated again.
Daniel.
She walked into the hallway before answering.
“Sarah.”
His voice sounded exhausted.
She said nothing.
“Where are you?”
“You know where.”
“How is Lily?”
“You tell me.”
Silence.
Then, “Is she awake?”
“Yes.”
Another silence.
Sarah leaned against the wall.
A woman pushing an IV pole walked past in fuzzy socks.
“What did she tell you?” Daniel asked.
Sarah closed her eyes.
There it was again.
Not How is she?
What did she tell you?
“Why were you using my phone?”
Daniel breathed out.
“I can explain that.”
“Good.”
“Not over the phone.”
“Try.”
“I was moving some money.”
“What money?”
“Sarah.”
“What money?”
“It wasn’t completed.”
She almost laughed.
“That was not my question.”
“I had a short-term issue with the Monroe project.”
Sarah knew the Monroe project.
A forty-unit renovation Daniel’s company had been struggling to finish for nearly a year.
“You told me Monroe was funded.”
“It was.”
“Then what money were you moving?”
“There was a gap.”
“From where?”
“Your account.”
Her knees felt unstable.
She moved to one of the chairs along the wall.
“You were transferring money from my account?”
“I was going to replace it.”
“That is also not my question.”
“I knew you’d say no.”
Sarah stared at the opposite wall.
The fact that he said it calmly hurt more than if he had shouted.
“So you used my phone because you knew I’d say no.”
“I was trying to protect us.”
“No.”
“Sarah, please listen.”
“No. You don’t get to turn stealing from me into protecting me.”
“I wasn’t stealing.”
“What do you call taking money from somebody who told you not to take it?”
“I was going to pay it back in four days.”
“With what?”
“The Winston closing.”
“Is that real?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“Is it actually closing?”
Another pause.
“It should.”
Sarah rubbed her forehead.
“Did you give Lily a pill?”
“No.”
Sarah’s hand dropped.
“No?”
“She took one.”
“She says you handed it to her.”
“She misunderstood.”
“An eight-year-old misunderstood a tablet appearing in her hand?”
“I gave her the bottle because she wouldn’t stop threatening to run out and interrupt the ceremony.”
Sarah stared at nothing.
“Why would giving her a bottle stop her?”
“It was stupid.”
“Did you tell her it was medicine for being nervous?”
Daniel did not answer.
“Did you?”
“Yes, but I didn’t tell her to take it.”
“She says you did.”
“She’s a child.”
Sarah gripped the phone.
“Be very careful.”
“I’m not blaming her.”
“You just did.”
“I’m saying she was scared. She could have misunderstood.”
“She swallowed your prescription.”
“I know.”
“She could barely stand.”
“I know.”
“She collapsed in front of me.”
“I know, Sarah.”
His voice broke on her name.
For one dangerous second, she heard the man she loved.
Not the groom in the ballroom.
Daniel in the kitchen at two in the morning making grilled cheese because Sarah’s father had died and she had forgotten to eat all day. Daniel driving three hours to retrieve Lily’s stuffed rabbit after Claire left it at a hotel. Daniel sitting beside his own mother during chemotherapy, peeling the labels from water bottles because he could not tolerate doing nothing with his hands.
Sarah hated that those things remained true.
“You called her a brat,” she said.
“What?”
“You told her not to be difficult like Claire.”
“Oh, come on.”
The contempt in his voice arrived before he could hide it.
Sarah felt something settle.
Not complete certainty.
Enough.
“Where are you?”
“At the hotel.”
“Stay away from the hospital.”
“I need to see you.”
“No.”
“Sarah.”
“Do not come here.”
“What are you going to do?”
She looked through the glass panel in Lily’s door.
Claire was smoothing her daughter’s hair away from her forehead.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Please don’t talk to the police until we talk.”
Sarah closed her eyes.
Of all the things he could have said.
Of all the things.
“Goodbye, Daniel.”
She ended the call.
A hospital security officer approached five minutes later.
Then a police officer.
The hospital had contacted authorities because a child appeared to have ingested medication prescribed to an adult under circumstances that raised concern.
Sarah did not know whether that was automatic or a decision someone had made.
She did not ask.
She told the officer exactly what she had seen.
Not what she feared.
Not what Claire believed.
She described Lily running toward her at the altar. The bottle. The words. The collapse. Daniel’s responses.
The officer asked whether Sarah still had the bottle.
“No. The paramedics took it.”
He nodded and wrote something.
Claire gave her account separately.
Lily was not questioned in detail that night. A nurse explained that adults did not need to make her repeat the story over and over when she was tired and receiving care.
Sarah was grateful for that.
By seven in the evening, someone from the hotel had delivered a garment bag containing Sarah’s street clothes.
Her mother had included jeans, a cream sweater, flat shoes, makeup wipes, a hairbrush, and an old gray sweatshirt Sarah had left at her house years earlier.
At the bottom was a peanut butter sandwich in foil.
May you like
Sarah sat in the hospital bathroom and cried over the sandwich.
Not loudly.
