Chương 2
Adrian turned toward her.
“How did you see the injection?”
Lucy looked at Evelyn.
Then at Harrison.
Then back at Adrian.
“I came downstairs for water.”
Her voice had lost none of its calm, which disturbed Adrian more than fear would have.
“Last night?”
She nodded.
“What time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lucy,” Harrison said, “you don’t have to—”
“I asked her.”
Harrison looked at Adrian.
Adrian immediately regretted the sharpness in his voice, but regret had nowhere useful to go.
Lucy pointed toward the corridor behind the staircase.
“The clock did eleven bangs.”
Eleven.
Adrian looked at Evelyn.
He usually took his evening medication at ten thirty.
By eleven he was often asleep.
“What did you see?”
Lucy shifted the glass between her hands.
“I went to the kitchen. I heard you talking.”
“Me?”
“You were making sleepy sounds.”
Adrian frowned.
“Sleepy sounds?”
“She means you were probably half conscious,” Harrison said.
Lucy nodded.
“Like when my dad used to answer me when he was asleep.”
Her father had died two years earlier. Adrian knew that only because Lucy’s mother, Naomi Carter, had mentioned it during one of the few conversations they had ever had.
Lucy continued.
“Miss Evelyn had a needle.”
Evelyn turned away.
Adrian’s stomach tightened.
“Where?”
Lucy touched the side of her own upper thigh.
“She put it here. Then your foot did that.”
The girl wiggled two fingers.
“And she said something?”
Lucy hesitated for the first time.
Evelyn looked at her.
“Lucy.”
Harrison stepped between them.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not threatening her.”
“You don’t need to say anything at all to her right now.”
Evelyn’s mouth tightened.
Lucy looked at Adrian.
“She said, ‘That’s more response than yesterday.’”
Adrian heard Harrison exhale.
“And then?” Adrian asked.
“A man talked on her phone.”
“What man?”
“I couldn’t see him.”
“Did you hear what he said?”
Lucy nodded.
“He said, ‘Do the other side and keep the morning normal.’”
Evelyn sat down.
There was no chair behind her. She simply lowered herself onto the bottom stair.
For almost a minute, Adrian did not speak.
He looked at his feet.
The right one was still wet.
Fourteen months earlier he had woken in St. Vincent’s private trauma unit with three broken ribs, a fractured pelvis, spinal swelling, and no reliable sensation below the waist. His neurosurgeon had told him the injury was incomplete, which had seemed encouraging until Adrian learned that incomplete did not mean temporary.
At first there had been movement.
Tiny contractions.
Unreliable reflexes.
A brief sensation of pressure in his left calf.
Then less.
Then nothing.
The official language had changed slowly. Recovery uncertain became prognosis guarded. Guarded became unlikely. Unlikely became prepare for permanent disability.
Adrian had despised every phrase.
Eventually he had accepted all of them.
Acceptance had not looked noble. It had looked like canceling appointments. Drinking Scotch at three in the afternoon. Firing a therapist because she used the phrase new normal. Ignoring friends until they stopped calling. Converting the west wing of the mansion so he could avoid being carried upstairs.
He had treated surrender as dignity because surrender hurt less when given an expensive name.
Now a seven-year-old girl had poured water on his foot and cracked the structure beneath his life.
Harrison took out his phone.
Evelyn stood abruptly.
“Who are you calling?”
“An ambulance.”
“No.”
Everyone looked at Adrian.
Harrison’s eyebrows rose.
“You may have emerging neurological function after a spinal injury and evidence of an unauthorized injection. You need to be examined.”
“I said no ambulance.”
“Adrian.”
“I’m not being carried out of my own house while half the county films it.”
“That is not the relevant consideration.”
“It is to me.”
Harrison stared at him for a moment.
“You can be rich and medically stupid at the same time.”
Lucy looked between them.
Under different circumstances, Adrian might have laughed.
Instead he said, “Call the private medical transport service.”
“An ambulance is faster.”
“I’ve been paralyzed for fourteen months. We can survive another twenty minutes.”
Harrison’s expression hardened.
“That sentence may turn out to be less intelligent than it sounded.”
“Call them.”
Harrison muttered something under his breath and stepped away.
Adrian turned toward Evelyn.
“Phone.”
She did not move.
“Give me your phone.”
“You can’t demand—”
“Actually,” Harrison said without looking up from his own screen, “right now I’d recommend you touch nothing, delete nothing, and call an attorney.”
Evelyn stared at him.
“That isn’t helping.”
“I’m not trying to help you.”
The sentence landed harder because Harrison said it gently.
Evelyn removed the phone from her uniform pocket and placed it on the console table.
Adrian looked at it.
The urge to grab it was nearly physical.
He wanted names. Messages. Orders. Proof.
He wanted the person responsible immediately visible so he could put the full weight of his money, lawyers, investigators, company, and rage on that person before lunch.
Instead he looked at Lucy.
She was shivering.
“Your socks are wet.”
Lucy glanced down.
“Oh.”
Adrian almost smiled.
Of everything in the room, that was apparently the problem she had not noticed.
Naomi Carter entered through the dining room doors carrying a folded linen runner and stopped.
Her daughter stood beside a puddle.
Adrian was half uncovered in his wheelchair.
Evelyn looked close to fainting.
Harrison was calling someone in the clipped voice he used when expecting obedience.
Naomi set down the linen.
“What happened?”
Lucy said, “His foot works a little.”
Evelyn made a sound that could have been a laugh if there had been any humor in it.
Naomi looked at Adrian.
Then at the glass.
Then at the bare legs.
“What did you do?”
The question was aimed at Lucy.
“I tested him.”
“You what?”
“She may have done me a favor,” Adrian said.
Naomi’s attention shifted to him.
He did not know how to explain the morning without frightening her.
He failed.
“Your daughter saw Evelyn inject me while I was unconscious last night.”
May you like
Naomi became completely still.
Lucy said, “He was sort of awake.”
