Page 61 of The Secrets We Hide
“She certainly had a type,” Jude said. “You think Allison was fed up with her real-life husbandandher work husband, and that’s why she was blowing up her life and leaving town?”
Emmy shrugged again, but she remembered what it had felt like when she’d finally decided to leave Jonah. She’d gone from thinking she couldn’t live without him one day to wishing he was violently murdered the next.
“When I talked to Bill at the ballpark, he implied that he and Allison hooked up at his motel the night before she was killed. And when I talked to Reggie, it seemed like he believed their relationship would recover from the fight. The cop in me wonders if they’re lying. The person who was Allison’s friend knows that they were both probably right. She always went back.”
“The case of contradictions continues.”
The glass fractured inside Emmy’s throat again. Jude’s voice, her intonations, the way she studied Emmy with one eyebrow cocked, were so reminiscent of Myrna that it was like standing beside her mother. Emmy gripped together her hands. Then she saw Jude watching and forced her hands apart.
The doors opened. Emmy was out first. She looked up and down the empty hallway, welcoming the shot of anger that replaced the embarrassing swell of emotion. “I told Brett to postsomebody outside Mandy’s door the minute she was out of surgery.”
Jude followed her toward the nurses’ station. No one was at the desk, but Mandy’s name and room number were on a white-board behind a bank of computers for anybody to see.
“Unbelievable.” Emmy started to text a nasty message to Brett. Then she deleted it, because she didn’t want him showing it to his pals.
“Emmy?” Layla Paulson was coming out of a room at the end of the hall. She was a sturdy-looking woman who exuded kindness. Her blouse was wrinkled. Her hair looked less tidy than usual. Emmy looked at the time. She knew that Layla had stayed with Mandy well past working hours to make sure the girl wasn’t alone.
Emmy asked, “Is she awake?”
“She’s started to come around. It’s not going to be like a light switch turning on. Her eyes keep opening and closing. We had to restrain her arms so she wouldn’t remove the bandages. She’s breathing on her own, a bit agitated. These are all good signs.”
“Has she said anything?”
“Not much beyond expressing pain. Her throat is sore from being intubated. We brought her some ice chips. One of the OR nurses heard her ask for her father before she went into surgery.”
Emmy had sent a deputy to follow Bill to the hospital from the ballpark, but she’d let him leave after it was made clear Bill wasn’t going to be allowed access to Mandy. “Is Bill still here?”
“He was downstairs earlier, but security made it clear he couldn’t see her. He tried to make a scene. They got him out of here quickly.”
Emmy glanced at Jude. “Did the OR nurse say how Mandy asked for Bill?”
“Not in an alarming way.” Layla had clearly been following the chatter online. “More like, ‘Where’s my dad?’”
“Okay.” Emmy realized she hadn’t made introductions. “This is Dr. Jude Archer. She’s—she’s consulting with me on the case.” Emmy tuned out their small talk. She looked at the door to Mandy’s room. She could hear the faint beeps of a heart monitor. The soft hiss of oxygen. Unbidden, she remembered walking thehalls of the memory care center in the nursing home. The feeling of dread when she went back into the room that her mother would be gone. Or worse, that she would still be alive.
“Emmy?” Layla waited for her to snap out of it. “I can only give you a few minutes with her. She can’t be stressed out.”
Emmy had to be honest. “She’s gonna be stressed. I need to ask her if she saw the man who murdered her mother and shot her in the head.”
Layla frowned. “It’s very unlikely she’ll remember those details. It’ll take time for everything to come back. She might not even know why she’s here.”
Jude weighed in. “Her brain is still trying to rewire itself. She won’t be oriented to time or place. Ask open-ended questions. Guide her away from Allison. The main thing she’ll need to feel right now is safe. She might not recall the shooting, but the body holds on to trauma. She’ll still be trapped inside the fear.”
Emmy’s instinct was to argue, but she had to accept that Jude was the expert. “Okay.”
Layla gestured toward the doorway. Emmy entered first. She heard Jude stop behind her. Layla took position at the foot of the bed. They all three stood in place, no one speaking, the beep of the heart monitor and Mandy’s shallow breathing offering the only sound.
The lights were off, but the glow from the monitors provided a ghostly illumination. The room was laid out like any hospital room. Large window overlooking the air-conditioning units on the roof below. Plastic blinds with slats akimbo. Wallpaper patterned in a geometric design. A rolling table with a box of tissues and a Styrofoam cup filled with ice chips. A reclining chair covered in weird, antimicrobial vinyl that had the texture of white bread and smelled like burned Cheez-Its. A single hospital bed with the rails up.
A small, young girl enveloped in heavy blankets.
Mandy’s eyes were closed, but it was hard to tell if that was because she was asleep or because the lids were swollen shut. Her skin had an unnatural puffiness. Bruises were starting to edge across her face. Her lips were pale. Velcro restraints tethered her tiny arms to either side of the bed. Her right wristand leg were in a cast. Her head looked almost twice its size because of a thick turban of bandages. The oxygen canula had slipped from her nose. Without thinking, Emmy reached out and gently tucked it back in. She blinked her eyes and remembered the thousands of times she had done the same for her mother.
Emmy cleared her throat. Banished thoughts of Myrna from her mind.
“Mandy?”
The girl stirred. Her lips smacked. She turned her head toward Emmy, but her eyes did not open.
