“I don’t know.” My throat tightened.
“I left the hospital to come here.
I haven’t called back yet.”
“Call the hospital.
Right now.
Then call me back.”
I called the hospital.
The nurse on Frank’s ward answered on the second ring.
I gave my name.
There was a pause — the kind of pause that has a shape — and then she said she was sorry.
Frank had passed forty-five minutes ago.
I sat with that for a moment.
Miriam had come to stand in the doorway between the hall and the living room.
She read my face before I said anything.
Her hand went to the doorframe.
“He’s gone,” I said.
She nodded once.
Her eyes closed.
I called Paulson back.
“He’s gone,” I said again.
“My father just passed.”
“I’m sorry.” A beat.
“Claire, I need you to listen to me carefully.
Don’t contact Gerald Marsh tonight.
Don’t call him, don’t text him, don’t let him know where you are.
Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
“The nurse’s statement — do you have the original document with you?”
“It’s in my hands.”
“Don’t let it out of your sight.
I’m going to make a call in the morning to someone I know in the county medical examiner’s office.
If there’s anything to find, we find it properly.
That means you don’t move first.”
“He was at the hospital last week,” I said.
“He was alone with Frank.”
“I heard you.” His voice was careful.
“One step at a time.
Can you stay where you are tonight?”
I looked at Miriam.
She was still in the doorway, watching me with Frank’s dark eyes.
“Yes,” I said.
“I can stay here.”
I put the phone down.
Miriam came and sat beside me on the sofa — not across from me, beside me — and for a while neither of us spoke.
The photographs on the wall looked back at us.
Frank young and smiling.
Frank holding a small girl up toward the camera.
Frank looking at the little girl the way people look at things they are afraid of losing.
“Did he know?” I finally asked.
“When he sent me here tonight — did he know he wasn’t going to make it through?”
“Yes,” Miriam said.
“I think he did.”
“Then why didn’t he just tell me himself?
