Chương 3
“How is she?” Lena asked.
“They’re treating hypothermia and an asthma episode.”
“I didn’t see an inhaler.”
“She carries one in her school bag.”
“She didn’t have a school bag.”
“No.”
The word came out flat.
Dominic turned.
“Detective Chen asked whether I knew you.”
“What did you say?”
“The truth.”
“Which truth?”
“That I knew your name.”
He looked past her toward the consultation room. “Mara Chen has been trying to put me in prison for six years.”
“She didn’t mention it.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“Did you do what she thinks you did?”
His gaze returned to Lena.
People probably did not ask him that. Not directly and not while wearing his overcoat.
“Some of it,” he said.
The honesty unsettled her more than denial would have.
A doctor came through the double doors and asked for Lily’s father. Dominic crossed the waiting room in four long steps. Lena stayed where she was, but the doctor’s voice carried.
Lily’s oxygen level had improved. Her lungs were responding to treatment. She had bruising from restraint or rough handling but no fractures. They would admit her for observation.
“Can I see her?”
“One person at a time.”
Dominic turned to Lena.
“She asked for you.”
Elena Price looked sharply at him.
Lena said, “You should go first.”
“She asked for both of us.”
The room was dim except for monitor lights and a lamp near the sink. Lily lay beneath heated blankets, her damp hair combed away from her face. Someone had placed the teddy bear beside her pillow in a clear plastic evidence bag.
Lena stopped near the door.
Lily’s eyes found her.
“You stayed.”
“I said I would.”
Dominic sat beside the bed. He did not touch his daughter immediately. He rested one hand near hers and waited until her fingers moved toward him.
“Where were you?” he asked softly.
A nurse looked up from the chart.
Dominic corrected himself. “You don’t have to tell me now.”
Lily stared at the bagged teddy bear.
“The room had birds.”
“What room?”
“Gold birds.”
“Was it a house?”
Her breathing quickened.
Lena moved closer. “You don’t have to solve it tonight.”
Lily’s gaze shifted to her.
“Was it cold?” Lena asked.
A small nod.
“Did someone give you water?”
Another nod.
“What color was the cup?”
The nurse glanced at Lena.
Lily closed her eyes. “Green.”
“That’s enough.”
Dominic’s thumb moved once over the back of Lily’s hand.
The nurse asked them to let her rest.
In the hallway, Dominic said, “Why ask about the cup?”
“Because it was something that didn’t ask her to remember the worst part.”
“Are you trained?”
“No.”
“How did you know?”
Lena looked down at the cuffs of his coat. “I used to work with children.”
“Used to?”
“The day-care owner’s husband kept touching the staff. I complained. She fired me.”
Dominic’s face changed, though only at the mouth.
“What happened to him?”
“Nothing.”
He looked toward Lily’s room. “Nothing is a choice people make.”
“It usually belongs to whoever has more money.”
Elena Price approached. “Mr. Rosetti, we need to discuss press exposure and contact with law enforcement.”
Dominic did not take his eyes off Lena. “Have someone drive her home.”
“I can take the bus.”
“It’s after two.”
“The bus still runs.”
“You’re wearing my coat.”
Lena started to remove it.
“Keep it until you’re dry.”
“I don’t accept expensive things from strangers.”
“You climbed into an ambulance with my daughter.”
“That didn’t make us friends.”
“No,” he said. “It made me owe you.”
“That’s exactly what worries me.”
One of the security men drove her home.
His name was Daniel. He looked about thirty-five and had the tired eyes of someone who had spent the last several hours expecting to fail at something unforgivable. He did not make conversation until they reached Lena’s block in Albany Park.
“You saved her life,” he said.
“The paramedics did.”
“You stayed long enough for them to.”
Lena watched rain blur the storefronts. “Were you supposed to be with her?”
Daniel’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“That’s not my question to answer.”
“It sounded like one.”
He pulled to the curb in front of Lena’s apartment building.
“It was supposed to be a normal school pickup,” he said. “Nothing about tonight was normal.”
Lena climbed out with Dominic’s coat over her arm. Before she closed the door, Daniel said, “Be careful who asks you what she said.”
She bent toward the open window. “Why?”
But he had already looked forward.
Her apartment was on the third floor above a laundromat that never quite lost the smell of hot dust and detergent. The hallway light had burned out again. Lena climbed the stairs by the glow from her phone and found a yellow envelope pushed beneath her door.
FINAL NOTICE.
Her rent was twelve days late.
She set the envelope on the kitchen counter beside two unpaid utility bills and Dominic Rosetti’s overcoat. Water dripped from her hair onto the linoleum.
The apartment had one bedroom, one narrow bathroom, and a kitchen window that faced a brick wall. Lena had lived there for five years. She knew which floorboard clicked, which radiator pipe knocked before dawn, and how far to lift the bathroom window before it jammed.
She changed into sweatpants and an old college T-shirt from a school she had attended for one semester. Then she sat at the kitchen table and stared at the coat.
Its lining held an inside pocket. Something firm pressed against the fabric.
Lena hesitated before reaching in.
She found a folded receipt from a florist, a silver pen, and a child’s pink hair tie.
The receipt was dated three days earlier. Twelve white tulips. The card message was printed beneath the total.
For B. I am still trying.
Lena put everything back exactly as she found it.
Her phone began ringing.
The restaurant owner’s name appeared.
May you like
She considered letting it stop. Then she answered.
“Where the hell did you go?” Frank Bellweather demanded.
