Chapter 5: Three Floors Up
I didn't sleep.
By six in the morning I had read everything Marcus had sent through — scanned documents, a court filing reference number, a photograph of Geoffrey Crane taken from an old law firm website.
Gray-haired.
Unremarkable.
The kind of face that belongs behind a desk in a room where important things are decided quietly.
The nurse who came in for the morning shift was different from the one the night before.
Younger.
She checked Elodie's oxygen levels and wrote something in the chart without looking at me.
"Is Dr.
Osei in today?" I asked.
"She's on from eight."
"I need to speak with her before my mother arrives.
Is there a way to — "
"I'll leave a note at the desk." She looked up.
"Is there a concern about a visitor?"
"Yes."
She held my gaze for a moment.
Then she wrote something else in the chart.
"I'll make sure Dr.
Osei knows," she said.
My mother arrived at half past eight, as she always did, with a paper cup of coffee she hadn't bought for me and a pleasantness that sat on her face like a coat she had put on at the door.
"You look terrible," she said.
"I didn't sleep."
"You should go home.
Shower.
I'll stay with her."
"No."
She set her bag down.
"Daniel — "
"Sit down, Mom."
Something moved behind her eyes.
She sat.
Elodie was awake, eating a small bowl of cereal the breakfast aide had brought.
She watched her grandmother the way small animals watch something they cannot outrun.
"Elodie," I said, "can you put your headphones on for a few minutes?
Your show is still on the tablet."
She reached for the tablet without a word.
She already knew.
Children always know when the conversation is not for them.
I waited until the headphones were on.
"Geoffrey Crane," I said.
My mother's hand stopped moving on the strap of her bag.
"He filed a civil inquiry three weeks ago.
Someone is contesting Dad's estate." I kept my voice flat.
"You've called him four times since Elodie was admitted.
You called him the morning she collapsed."
"You have no idea what you're talking about."
"Then explain it to me."
"There is nothing to explain.
Geoffrey is an old acquaintance.
The inquiry is a nuisance.
Some opportunist trying to make a claim on something that was settled legally over a decade ago."
"Dad had another daughter."
The room went very still.
Elodie's cartoon played on, tiny and tinny through the headphones.
"Where did you hear that?" my mother said.
"Is it true?"
"It is ancient history."
"Is it true?"
She looked at the window.
"Your father made a mistake.
A long one.
I chose to stay.
I chose to protect this family.
What I did with that estate was — "
"You paid Crane to bury the will."
"I protected what was ours."
"There was a nineteen-year-old girl who was supposed to inherit part of that money.
Dad wanted her to have it."
"Your father," she said carefully, "was not in a position to want anything by that point.
He was dying.
He was not thinking clearly."
"So you decided for him."
"I decided for us." She turned back to me.
"For you.
For the house you grew up in.
For the school you attended.
That money kept this family standing."
"And Crane.
He's been quiet for eleven years.
Why is he moving now?"
She didn't answer immediately.
"Because someone found her," she finally said.
"The girl.
Someone told her."
"Who?"
My mother looked at me for a long moment.
"I was hoping," she said slowly, "that it wouldn't come to this."
She opened her bag and took out an envelope.
She set it on the arm of the chair between us.
"That came to my house two weeks ago.
No return address."
I picked it up.
Inside was a single photograph.
A young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty.
Dark hair.
Standing outside a building I didn't recognize.
On the back, in handwriting I didn't know:
*She knows.
And she's three floors up.*
I looked at the envelope.
Then at my mother.
"Three floors up," I said.
"In this hospital?"
May you like
My mother said nothing.
I was already standing.
