Chương 9
Amelia had rented the apartment in March, telling herself it was closer to the foundation office and useful during late grant cycles. Daniel had helped choose the sofa. Neither of them used the word separation until June.
“You shouldn’t be alone tonight,” he said.
“Maya is coming by after her shift.”
“You asked her?”
“She offered. I said yes.”
He nodded, wounded by a decision he had no right to resent.
At the apartment, he carried her handbag and discharge medications upstairs. He opened the refrigerator and stared inside.
“You have mustard, sparkling water, and half a lemon.”
“There’s soup in the freezer.”
“How old?”
“Not legally significant.”
He found the containers, read the labels, and heated one. Amelia lowered herself onto the sofa, every movement requiring an undignified concentration she hated.
The apartment looked exactly as she had left it the day before: two grant reports on the coffee table, a blue mug in the sink, a cardigan draped over a chair. Normal objects made the hospital feel less possible, not more distant.
Daniel brought the soup and set it down.
“I can sleep on the sofa.”
“No.”
“I won’t bother you.”
“You bother me when you try not to.”
He sat in the armchair across from her. “I don’t know what to do.”
The admission sounded foreign in his voice.
“Call a lawyer. Tell the truth. Stop trying to preserve every option.”
“And with you?”
“You may not have an option with me tonight.”
He looked at the floor.
Amelia ate three spoonfuls of soup. It tasted mostly of celery.
“Did you love her?” she asked.
“No.”
“Did she love you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Victoria knows what she wants.”
“She wanted the hospital.”
“That isn’t the whole answer.”
Daniel leaned back, exhausted. “She wanted to be the person I trusted most. Maybe she thought that was love.”
“And did you?”
“Trust her most?”
“Yes.”
“For the hospital, sometimes.”
Amelia set the spoon down.
Daniel spoke before she could. “That doesn’t mean I trusted her more than you.”
“It means you divided trust into departments so you never had to compare it.”
He gave a small, helpless laugh. “You make me sound like an organizational chart.”
“You made our marriage one.”
The buzzer sounded.
Maya arrived carrying a grocery bag and wearing jeans, a dark sweater, and the exhausted expression of someone who had completed a twelve-hour shift only to enter another person’s disaster.
“I brought crackers,” she said. “And bananas. The pharmacy downstairs had flowers, but they looked depressed.”
Daniel took the bag.
Maya glanced between them. “I can come back.”
“He’s leaving,” Amelia said.
Daniel did not argue.
At the door, he turned. “Evelyn scheduled interviews tomorrow. The board meets at four.”
“Will you attend?”
“With separate counsel.”
“Good.”
He looked as though he wanted to say something else. Instead, he placed Amelia’s handbag on the table and left.
Maya waited until the elevator doors closed.
“That was uncomfortable,” she said.
“He usually improves a room.”
“Maybe the room has changed.”
Maya unpacked groceries. She had purchased plain yogurt, bread, bananas, crackers, ginger tea, and a jar of olives.
“I hate olives,” Amelia said.
“Good. They’re mine.”
The ordinary selfishness of it made Amelia trust her more.
They spent the evening without discussing Victoria for almost an hour. Maya complained about the hospital’s new scheduling software. Amelia described a donor who insisted children could not enjoy books printed on recycled paper. Maya washed the blue mug in the sink even after Amelia told her not to.
At nine, Maya’s phone buzzed.
She read the message and went still.
“What is it?”
“A supervisor asking whether I removed a patient belonging from contaminated waste without authorization.”
“You didn’t remove it.”
“I sealed the bin.”
“Then say that.”
Maya typed, stopped, deleted, and placed the phone facedown.
“If I answer, it becomes an interview by text.”
“Good instinct.”
“My father used to send messages like that after fights. Questions shaped like traps.”
“You mentioned him at the hospital.”
Maya leaned against the counter. “He managed a restaurant. Cash disappeared. He blamed employees, then my mother, then me. I knew he was taking it. I was seventeen. When an accountant asked questions, I said I didn’t know.”
“What happened?”
“The restaurant closed. He left. My mother spent five years paying debts that weren’t hers.”
“That’s why you spoke up.”
“That’s why I recognized the feeling before speaking up.”
Amelia looked at the dark phone.
“Are you willing to tell counsel everything?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you lose your job?”
Maya folded the grocery bag into a narrow rectangle. “Ask me tomorrow.”
It was the most honest answer Amelia had heard all day.
The next morning, Amelia woke before dawn with pain and the certainty that she had made a mistake leaving the hospital. She sat on the edge of the bed, sweating, while Maya called the surgical service.
The on-call resident asked questions, had Amelia check the incision, and concluded that the pain likely reflected the previous day’s activity. He offered cautious instructions and told her when to return to the emergency department.
No ambulance arrived. No dramatic complication justified everyone’s fear. Amelia took medication, waited, and improved slowly.
At seven, Maya made toast too dark and scraped it over the sink.
“You don’t have to stay,” Amelia said.
“I know.”
“You have an interview.”
“At ten.”
“You should prepare.”
“I am preparing by avoiding it.”
They ate in silence.
At eight thirty, Evelyn called. She had found that the Chicago attorney named in the declaration had prepared templates at Victoria’s request but denied representing Amelia. Victoria had told the attorney that Amelia’s independent counsel would complete the declaration later.
“Then why was the attorney’s name typed beneath my signature line?”
“She says a junior associate inserted it as a placeholder.”
“Convenient.”
“Possibly careless. Not necessarily criminal.”
May you like
Amelia appreciated Evelyn’s refusal to make every ugly fact definitive.
“There’s more,” Evelyn said. “The marriage petition appears to have been downloaded from a public court form library. It was not prepared by Barlow, Stein.”
