Chương 2
“I’ll call my daughter,” she said.
Denise led her to a small family consultation room across from the elevators. It contained four chairs, a box of tissues, a dead plant, and a laminated poster explaining how to recognize a stroke. Emily sat with her knees together because the gown left her shoulders bare and suddenly seemed designed for a different species of woman.
Denise brought gauze and an adhesive bandage.
“I can do it,” Emily said.
“I believe you.”
Denise placed the supplies on the table rather than touching her.
That small act of respect nearly undid Emily. She turned her attention to the phone. The recording timer showed one minute and forty-three seconds. She stopped it, saved the file, and watched the generic title appear: New Recording 17.
Seventeen.
There were sixteen recordings before it—flower orders, menu notes, reminders spoken while driving, a melody she had hummed because she could not remember the name of the song. None had changed her life.
She opened her contacts and stared at her daughter’s name.
CLAIRE CARTER.
The last call between them had lasted four minutes and ended with Claire saying, “You don’t have to believe me, Mom. You just have to stop pretending every question is an attack.”
That had been three months earlier.
Emily pressed the call button.
Claire answered on the fifth ring.
“Hello?”
Emily could hear traffic and a turn signal clicking. Her daughter’s voice was cautious, not warm.
“It’s me.”
“I know.”
“Are you driving?”
“I’m parked.”
Emily pictured Claire’s habit of lying about small practical things to prevent maternal objections. At twenty-nine, she still said she had eaten when she had not and claimed to be parked whenever she used the speakerphone.
“I need you to come to St. Catherine’s,” Emily said.
“What happened to Mark?”
The speed of the question stung.
“Nothing happened to Mark.”
“Then what happened?”
Emily looked at Denise, who had moved to the doorway to give her privacy while remaining close enough to intervene.
“I won the lottery.”
Silence.
A horn sounded through Claire’s phone.
Emily pressed the gauze against her palm. “The jackpot.”
Another horn.
Then Claire said, “That isn’t funny.”
“I know.”
“How much?”
“One hundred million.”
“Mom.”
“And Mark isn’t sick. Or not the way he said. He was standing. He was laughing with a woman. He said I was easy. I recorded—”
“Where is the ticket?”
Claire’s voice had changed. It became flat and fast, the voice she used when managing a crisis at the community counseling center where she worked.
“In my bag.”
“Is the bag closed?”
“Yes.”
“Did you sign it?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone touch it?”
“No.”
“Did you photograph it?”
“I scanned it with the lottery app.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Emily closed her eyes.
“No. I didn’t photograph it.”
“Do that now. Front and back. Don’t text the pictures. Don’t email them. Put your phone on airplane mode after you call me. And don’t tell anybody else.”
“I told Mark.”
Claire made a sound that began as a breath and became something harsher.
“Of course you did.”
Emily pulled the gauze away. The bleeding had slowed.
“I was angry.”
“I’m not criticizing you.”
“You are.”
“I’m criticizing what happened, not you.”
“That sounds like something from work.”
“It is something from work, and it is still true.”
Emily could hear Claire start the car.
“Twenty minutes,” Claire said. “Stay with the nurse. Do not go back into that room. If Mark comes near you, call security.”
“He’s my husband.”
“Apparently not in any useful sense of the word.”
The line went dead.
Denise looked at Emily but did not ask what her daughter had said.
“I need to make two photographs,” Emily said.
“I’ll close the door.”
Emily placed the ticket on the table beneath the fluorescent light. The paper looked insultingly ordinary. The state logo was slightly blurred. One edge had been folded under a receipt from the convenience store where she had bought safety pins, mint gum, and a bottle of water before the hospital foundation gala.
She had purchased the ticket because the clerk, a boy with silver polish on his fingernails, told her the jackpot had reached one hundred million dollars.
“You look lucky,” he had said.
Emily had answered, “I look late.”
She took the photographs, returned the ticket to the handbag, and locked it.
Only then did she allow herself to remember how she had discovered the winning numbers.
An hour earlier, she had been seated beneath a chandelier at the Bellweather Hotel, wearing the turquoise gown Mark had chosen from a rack of dresses she considered too expensive. The hospital foundation gala had reached the portion of the evening where donors applauded one another for generosity while waiters removed untouched desserts.
Emily had received a text from Mark.
Bad episode. Room spinning. Can’t feel left leg. Please come.
She had stood so quickly her chair struck the table behind her. In the hotel lobby, while waiting for the valet, she opened the lottery app to distract herself from the possibility that Mark’s condition had worsened. She still had the ticket in her bag. She scanned it beneath the yellow light near the revolving doors.
The app displayed a message telling her the ticket might be a jackpot winner and advising her to contact the lottery office.
She scanned it again.
Then she checked each number against the official drawing.
She did not scream. She did not call anyone. She sat on a velvet bench while people in tuxedos passed her, and she thought about Mark’s hospital bills.
She thought about the private neurologist he wanted to see, the rehabilitation center he had shown her online, and the home modifications he said they might need. She thought about the mortgage on the house her mother had left her and the line of credit Mark wanted her to sign the next morning.
May you like
For eleven minutes, the money had seemed like mercy.
In the hospital elevator, she had nearly called Mark to tell him. Then the doors opened on the second floor, and she heard his laughter before she reached Room 214.
