Chapter 6: Her Father's Eyes
The third floor of the hospital was the respiratory unit.
I stood at the elevator and thought about that.
Elodie was on the fourth floor.
Respiratory.
A collapsed lung.
The same unit.
I took the stairs.
The ward on three was quieter than four.
Fewer staff at the desk.
I walked slowly, reading the names on the boards outside each room, feeling the wrongness of it — a father searching a hospital ward for a half-sister his daughter didn't know existed.
I found her in room 318.
The door was open.
She was sitting up in bed with a book face-down on her lap, looking at the window.
Dark hair.
The photograph had been recent.
She was younger-looking in person — or maybe just smaller.
An IV line ran into her left arm.
A pulse monitor clipped to her finger.
She turned when she heard me stop at the door.
I saw it immediately.
Not in her face exactly.
In the way she held herself.
The angle of her jaw.
The particular stillness she went into when she looked at a stranger.
My father used to go still like that.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I don't mean to intrude.
My name is Daniel Calloway."
She didn't move.
"I think," I said, "that Robert Calloway was your father too."
She looked at me for a long time.
"Close the door," she said.
Her name was Elodie Crane.
I had not known, when I named my daughter, that the name already belonged to someone.
My ex-wife had chosen it.
She'd said she'd always loved it.
I had never questioned it.
Now I sat in a chair beside a hospital bed and looked at a young woman who shared a name with my daughter and a father with me, and I didn't know where to begin.
She began instead.
"My mother told me about him before she died," she said.
"She said he was a good man who made a bad choice and then tried to fix it too late.
She wasn't angry.
She just wanted me to know."
"When did she tell you?"
"I was twelve.
She was sick by then." She looked at her hands.
"She said there was money.
That he'd made sure of it.
She said if I ever needed it, there were documents."
"Did you look for them?"
"Not until last year.
I needed surgery.
I didn't have insurance." She paused.
"That's why I'm here, actually.
They did the surgery six weeks ago.
I'm still recovering."
I thought about the timing.
The inquiry filed three weeks ago.
My mother's calls to Crane.
Elodie — my Elodie — admitted to the floor above one week later.
"How did you find the documents?"
"My uncle.
Geoffrey.
He had copies of everything." Her voice stayed even.
"He told me what happened.
What your mother did."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"You didn't do it."
"No.
But I benefited from it without knowing."
She looked at me directly.
"Are you here to ask me to drop the inquiry?"
"No," I said.
"I'm here because someone sent my mother a photograph of you and told her you were in this building.
And my mother has been doing things — " I stopped.
"My daughter is on the floor above you.
She's seven.
She's been sick.
And my mother has been here every day."
Something shifted in Elodie Crane's expression.
"What kind of things?" she said.
"Getting her out of bed.
When I'm not in the room."
The silence stretched.
"Your mother knows I'm here," she said.
It was not a question.
"Yes."
She looked at the door.
Then back at me.
"Three days ago," she said quietly, "a woman came to my room.
She said she was a volunteer.
Gray hair.
She brought a magazine." She paused.
"She asked me if I had family nearby.
I said no.
She asked if anyone knew I was here."
My chest went cold.
"What did she look like?"
Elodie Crane reached for her phone on the bedside table.
She turned it toward me.
A photograph.
Taken from her bed, through the partially open door, of a woman walking away down the corridor.
My mother's coat.
My mother's bag.
My mother's particular way of walking, slightly favoring her left side since the hip replacement three years ago.
"I took it because something felt wrong," she said.
"I didn't know why.
I just did."
I looked at the photograph for a long time.
"Can you send me that?" I said.
She already had her thumb over the share button.
May you like
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"Make sure," I said, "that she can't get near either of you again."
