Chapter 14
“Did she tell you what happened?”
“Only that someone had come to see her father.”
I glanced at Marcus.
He had gone pale.
“Did she say the woman’s name?”
Mrs. Alvarez lowered her voice.
“She said the woman told her she was a friend of your mother’s.”
My mother had died in a hospice room on a rainy Thursday afternoon. She had been ill for months, and by the end, she could barely speak. I had held her hand while my father sat on the other side of the bed, reading from an old cookbook because he couldn’t bear the silence.
Her friends had been there.
Her sister had been there.
But no one from that life had any reason to walk into our house and speak to Emily about Marcus.
“What did she want?” I asked.
“Emily said she asked whether your father was home.”
“My father?”
Mrs. Alvarez paused.
“She may have meant Marcus.”
“She knew his name.”
“I’m sure she did.”
I pressed a hand against my forehead.
“What else?”
“She asked whether Marcus had told you about the patient.”
The words settled into the air.
Beside me, Marcus closed his eyes.
“What patient?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Alvarez said. “Emily said the woman asked her if her father had told you about the patient he couldn’t save.”
Marcus’s face drained of color.
The lunch bag slipped from my hand and landed softly against the floor.
Dr. Patel took one step toward us.
“Marcus?”
He didn’t answer.
I looked at him.
“What patient?”
He opened his eyes.
“Claire, I—”
“What patient?”
His mouth tightened.
Dr. Patel glanced toward the surgical waiting area.
“Let’s move somewhere private.”
“No,” I said. “Not again.”
The words came out more strongly than I intended.
People nearby turned their heads.
I lowered my voice, but I did not retreat.
“No more rooms where people explain my husband to me. No more promises made on his behalf. If there is something else I need to know, he tells me now.”
Marcus looked at Dr. Patel.
Then at David.
Neither of them spoke.
Finally, he said, “There was a patient.”
I felt something inside me contract.
“When?”
“Last year.”
“Before your hand?”
“During the same period.”
“What happened?”
His face had the exhausted look of a man who had been carrying a memory so long that it had become part of his bones.