Chapter 5: What Diane Said When She Thought No One Was Listening
They put Diane in a family consultation room down the hall.
I know because the nurse told me, quietly, while she adjusted my IV.
"Your sister is asking for you every twenty minutes," she said.
"I thought you should know."
"Don't send her back," I said.
"I won't."
But at two in the morning, when Marcus had finally fallen asleep in the chair beside me, I heard voices in the hallway.
Not loud.
The kind of voices people use when they think walls are thicker than they are.
Diane's voice: "She doesn't understand what she's taking from us."
My mother's voice: "Keep it down."
"I'm serious.
Grandma Ruth never meant for it to go this way.
She was confused at the end.
Everyone knew that."
"Diane."
"If the baby had just — if it hadn't—"
"Stop talking."
A pause.
Then Diane again, lower: "How much does Pete know?"
Silence.
"Mom.
How much does Pete know?"
My mother's voice dropped so far I almost lost it: "Enough that we need to deal with him before he talks to anyone else."
I pressed the call button.
The nurse came in thirty seconds later.
I pointed at the door and said, "Please get Detective Marsh.
Right now.
Tell her I need her to come to this hallway immediately."
The nurse looked at my face and left without asking why.
Marsh arrived in four minutes.
She was still in the same clothes.
I didn't think she'd left the building.
I told her exactly what I'd heard.
She didn't write it down.
She just listened, and when I finished, she said, "Which direction did the voices come from?"
I pointed left.
She was already moving.
I lay back against the pillow and stared at the cracked plastic light cover again.
*Enough that we need to deal with him before he talks to anyone else.*
Pete had sent the text.
I was almost certain now.
Pete had watched it happen week after week and had finally done the only thing he could think to do — warn us without putting himself in the room.
And now my mother knew he'd talked.
Marcus woke up when Marsh came back twenty minutes later.
He sat up fast, the way people do when they've been sleeping lightly out of fear.
"We found your mother in the parking structure," Marsh said.
"She was on the phone." A pause.
"We also found your sister attempting to access the hospital records system at the nurses' station.
She told the desk clerk she was a family member and had the right to review your file."
"She was going to change something," Marcus said.
"We don't know that yet.
What we do know is that she was removed from the station and is now being formally interviewed." Marsh looked at me.
"I need to ask you something, and I need you to think carefully before you answer."
"Okay."
"Is there any chance your sister had access to your home?
Your kitchen, specifically?"
I went still.
Three weeks ago.
Diane had offered to drop off groceries when I'd mentioned I was too tired to shop.
I'd given her the key code because my hands were full and Marcus was traveling.
She'd been alone in our kitchen for forty minutes.
"Yes," I said.
Marsh nodded once.
"That's what I needed."
She left again.
Marcus looked at me.
"The groceries she brought."
"I know."
"You ate them."
"I know, Marcus."
He stood up and walked to the window.
The parking lot below was orange under the sodium lights.
He stood there with his back to me and his hands at his sides.
"She was in our home," he said.
"She was in our home and she—"
"Marcus."
He turned around.
His eyes were bright in a way I hadn't seen before.
Not tears.
Something harder.
"They are not going to walk away from this," he said.
"I don't care what it costs.
I don't care how long it takes.
They are not going to walk away."
I believed him.
My daughter's heartbeat beeped steadily on the monitor.
Still there.
Still fighting.
Then my phone lit up on the bedside table.
Unknown number.
The same format as the earlier text.
I opened it.
*They're going to say I acted alone.
I didn't.
There's a receipt.
Check the pharmacy two blocks from your mother's house.
Ask for the transaction records from the last six weeks.
My name is on three of them.
So is hers.*
I held the phone out to Marcus without a word.
He read it.
May you like
Read it again.
Then he called Marsh's number.
