Chương 5
Claire did not sleep.
At 3:12 a.m. she searched zolpidem.
At 3:14 she stopped reading.
At 3:21 she opened her health portal and began going backward through months of appointment notes.
Fatigue.
Morning confusion.
Dizziness.
Sleep disturbance.
Possible stress.
She had described the symptoms herself.
No doctor had ignored her.
No one had failed to care.
She had simply delivered the truth in pieces too small to form a picture.
At 3:46 she found a message Daniel had sent after one appointment.
Everything normal. Told you. Try to relax now?
The question mark made her angry.
At four she went downstairs.
Richard was awake in the kitchen, making coffee.
He slid a mug toward her.
She stared at it.
His face changed.
“Sorry.”
“No. It’s okay.”
He moved the mug away anyway.
Claire sat.
For several minutes they listened to the machine click and cool.
Finally Richard said, “I should’ve seen something.”
She looked at him.
“No.”
“I never trusted him.”
“That is not the same as knowing.”
“I gave you hell about marrying him.”
“You gave me hell about everybody I dated.”
“One of them sold nutritional supplements from his car.”
“He was twenty-three.”
“He was a criminal.”
“He had a business license.”
“For the car?”
Claire laughed.
This time it sounded almost normal.
Then she began crying without warning.
Not dramatically.
Her face simply folded.
Richard came around the counter and stopped a few feet away, uncertain whether she wanted to be touched.
She reached for him.
He held her.
“I don’t know what’s real,” she said into his shirt.
Richard pressed his cheek to her hair.
“Then don’t decide tonight.”
That became the first useful advice anyone gave her.
By noon, Daniel had called seventeen times.
Claire answered the eighteenth.
Richard was in the yard with Lily, helping her fill a bird feeder. Claire stood at the kitchen window and watched her daughter pour half the seed onto the patio.
“Where are you?” Daniel asked.
“You know where I am.”
“Your father won’t answer me.”
“He’s not required to.”
“Claire, I need to see Lily.”
“No.”
A pause.
“You can’t keep my daughter from me.”
“Our daughter.”
“Fine. Our daughter.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Daniel’s voice softened.
“I barely slept.”
She almost said neither did I.
Habit.
Marriage trained responses into people.
“I didn’t drug you.”
Claire looked at the coffee mug Richard had left in the sink.
“Did you crush pills into my tea?”
“No.”
“Did Lily see you crush something?”
“She saw me making tea.”
“Did you disconnect my car battery?”
A longer pause.
“I was checking a terminal yesterday.”
“Why?”
“It was corroded.”
“And you forgot to reconnect it?”
“I must have.”
“Daniel.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth would be interesting.”
He inhaled sharply.
“You sound like your father.”
There it was.
The old insult disguised as observation.
Once it would have worked.
Claire nearly smiled.
“Goodbye.”
“Wait.”
She stopped.
Daniel’s voice changed.
“Do not let Richard talk to Walter alone.”
Claire said nothing.
“Claire?”
“Why?”
“Because my father is confused.”
“About what?”
“Everything.”
“Walter knew exactly what the medication was.”
“He’s sixty-three. He drinks too much. He mixes things up.”
Walter drank one bourbon on Fridays and half a beer during football games.
Claire looked outside.
Richard was letting Lily climb onto his back.
“What are you afraid Walter will say?”
Daniel hung up.
Claire stared at the phone.
Then she wrote down the time of the call.
That was new.
She had never documented her marriage before.
Walter arrived at Richard’s house that afternoon.
Richard nearly refused to let him in.
Claire said, “I want to hear him.”
Walter stood in the foyer holding a grocery-store bag.
“I brought soup.”
Richard looked at the bag.
“Soup.”
“I didn’t know what else to bring.”
Claire took it from him.
It was chicken noodle.
The label said low sodium.
Walter had probably spent ten minutes deciding.
That made her angrier than if he had arrived empty-handed.
He sat at Richard’s dining table.
The rooms were smaller here. Nothing matched. Richard’s late wife had chosen the curtains in 2009 and Richard refused to change them because, he said, they continued to function as curtains.
Walter kept looking toward the hallway.
“Where’s Lily?”
“Not here,” Claire said.
She was upstairs with Megan.
Walter nodded.
“Good.”
Richard sat opposite him.
Claire remained standing.
Walter rubbed at a scratch on the table.
“I filled that prescription in January.”
“For insomnia?” Claire asked.
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Thirty.”
“And how many did you take?”
“Maybe six.”
Richard leaned forward.
“So twenty-four disappeared?”
“Not at once.”
Walter swallowed.
“I noticed some missing in March.”
“And?”
“I asked Daniel.”
Claire’s back went cold.
“You asked him.”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Walter stared at the table.
“That he’d taken a couple.”
“For me.”
Walter nodded.
“What did you do?”
“I told him not to.”
Richard pushed his chair back slightly.
Walter raised both hands.
“I told him it was dangerous. I told him he couldn’t give prescription medication to someone without a doctor.”
Claire heard the wording.
“Did he admit giving it to me?”
Walter looked up.
Not immediately.
That was enough.
“Walter.”
“He said you were having trouble sleeping.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“He said one or two times.”
Claire sat down.
She could not feel her fingertips.
Richard’s voice was almost inaudible.
“And you didn’t tell her.”
Walter’s face collapsed inward.
“I thought he stopped.”
“Why?”
“Because he said he did.”
Richard laughed once.
Walter’s eyes filled but the tears did not fall.
“He’s my son.”
Claire flinched.
Walter saw.
“I know how that sounds.”
“No,” Claire said. “You know how it sounds now.”
He looked away.
Richard stood and walked to the window.
For a while no one spoke.
Walter finally said, “There’s something else.”
Richard turned.
Claire’s stomach tightened.
Walter took out his phone.
“Daniel called me last night before the police came.”
May you like
“You were in our dining room.”
“I went to the bathroom.”
