Chapter 8: The Things That Were True All Along
The hospital kept Nora for four days.
Dehydration, they said.
Malnutrition.
A respiratory infection from the damp.
Nothing permanent.
Nothing that time and food and warmth wouldn't repair.
The doctor said it with the particular careful optimism of someone who had looked at the full picture and decided the good news was worth leading with.
I was there when they told her.
Perrin was beside me, holding her hand on top of the blanket.
"Four days," she said.
"Maybe five," the doctor said.
"We want to be sure."
"Okay." She looked at Perrin.
"Will you come back tomorrow?"
"I'm not leaving," he said.
She looked at me.
"We'll sort out the logistics," I said.
"Don't worry about that."
She nodded.
Then she turned her face toward the window, and I could see her jaw working — the effort of holding something in, in front of Perrin, in front of the doctor, in front of all of it.
I touched Perrin's shoulder.
"Go get a drink from the machine.
I'll come find you in five minutes."
He looked at me.
Then at his mother.
Then he went.
The doctor excused himself.
Nora kept looking at the window.
"Three years," she said.
"Yes."
"Perrin was six."
"Yes."
"He thought I was d*ad."
"Yes."
She turned from the window.
Her eyes were dry, which somehow made it worse.
"How did she do it?
The accident.
The funeral.
There must have been — someone must have — "
"The police are working through it.
There was a woman.
A Jane Doe from a different county.
Rhea had a contact in the records office." I paused.
"It goes back further than I knew.
She planned this before she ever came into our lives."
Nora stared at me.
"She targeted you," she said.
"She targeted us.
Both of us.
I don't know why yet.
That's still coming out."
A long silence.
"I used to think," Nora said slowly, "that if I ever got out, the first thing I'd feel was angry.
I thought I'd be furious.
At her.
At everyone who didn't look harder.
At you, maybe, for not knowing." She looked down at her hands.
"But sitting here, I just feel tired.
And grateful.
And I want to eat something that isn't bread."
I laughed.
It came out rough and surprised me.
She looked up.
And then she laughed too — a small, exhausted sound — and for just a moment she looked exactly like herself.
Exactly like the woman I had known before all of it.
"I'm going to need a lawyer," she said.
"I already called one.
She'll be here tomorrow morning."
"And Perrin's school — "
"Handled."
"And the — "
"Nora." I leaned forward.
"It's handled.
All of it.
You don't have to manage anything right now.
Just eat the bad hospital food and sleep in the clean bed and let us handle the rest."
She looked at me for a moment.
"Us," she said.
"Me and Perrin.
And Mrs.
Hallett, who has apparently been running the house single-handedly for years and deserves a significant raise."
Nora's mouth curved.
"She always did."
Perrin appeared in the doorway with a juice box and a packet of crackers and the expression of someone who had decided that was enough time away.
"Can I stay?" he said.
Nora held out her hand.
He came back to the chair beside her bed and settled in like he intended to stay for a long time.
I sat down on the other side.
May you like
Outside, the city moved and hummed and went about its business.
In the room, the three of us were quiet together — not the silence of things unsaid, but the silence of people who had run out of emergency and found, underneath it, something that had been waiting there the whole time.
