Chương 4
A former classmate sold a photograph of him after a middle-school fight. Someone found a video of Rosalie speaking at a foundation gala. Commentators froze her face at odd angles and circled the silver locket as though it were evidence.
Sebastian’s attorney issued a statement asking for privacy and warning against speculation.
Theodore learned about it from the hospital social worker because the police still had his phone.
“Did he mention the voicemail?” Theodore asked.
“No.”
“Did he mention the gag?”
“No.”
“Then it isn’t a statement. It’s an expensive way of saying nothing.”
The social worker, whose name was Pamela and whose badge had a cartoon turtle sticker on it, poured herself coffee and smelled it before deciding not to drink.
“You sound like your sister,” she said.
“You know her?”
“She corrected me once at a fundraiser. I called a youth shelter a charity. She said it was an emergency housing program and that language affects budgets.”
“That sounds like her.”
“She was right. Irritatingly.”
Theodore sat in the blue chair and watched Sebastian through the glass wall. His uncle had stopped making calls. He stood with both hands in his trouser pockets, looking out over the hospital parking structure.
“Can he make me go home?” Theodore asked.
“He is still your guardian.”
“Still?”
“Nothing changes automatically. There are procedures.”
“Procedures put Rosalie in a coffin.”
“No. People did that. Procedures may have been ignored.”
He disliked the distinction, then realized it mattered.
Rosalie remained unconscious through the night. Sebastian rented a suite at a hotel across from the hospital. Theodore refused to go with him. Pamela arranged for him to sleep on a reclining chair in a small family room near intensive care, though hospital policy allowed it only because Detective Cole requested that he remain available.
At two in the morning, Sebastian came in carrying a paper bag.
“You need food,” he said.
Theodore kept his eyes on the dark television. “I ate.”
“You had half a packet of crackers.”
“Pamela told you?”
“I observed the wrapper.”
Sebastian set the bag on the table. Inside were a turkey sandwich, an apple, and the brand of salt-and-vinegar chips Theodore liked. His uncle must have remembered from the previous summer, when they had spent three silent hours together in an airport after a canceled flight.
Theodore hated him a little more for remembering.
“Did you know about Rosalie’s investigation?” he asked.
Sebastian removed his suit jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. The shirt beneath was creased now. “I knew she had questions.”
“About missing money?”
“About expenditures she did not understand.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the answer I can give while police are examining foundation records.”
“Your lawyer told you not to talk to me.”
“My lawyer has told me many things today.”
“Was one of them to bring me chips?”
Sebastian looked at the bag. “No.”
Theodore opened the sandwich and found that he could not swallow. “Who decided to cremate her?”
“Rosalie had signed a preference document two years ago.”
“Show me.”
“The police have taken it.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes.”
“Did it say to do it six hours after she died?”
“No.”
“Then who rushed it?”
Sebastian sat across from him. “Eleanor said Rosalie had spoken repeatedly about not wanting public spectacle. Dr. Mercer told me there was no medical reason to delay. The funeral director had an opening before the crematory closed for maintenance.”
“And you believed all of that at four in the morning?”
“I had just been told my niece was dead.”
“You didn’t check.”
A pause opened between them.
“No,” Sebastian said. “I did not.”
The simple admission unsettled Theodore. He had expected denial, qualification, perhaps anger. Sebastian looked down at his silver watch and turned it once around his wrist, a habit Theodore had seen only during the week after his father’s death.
“Why was there blood on your cuff?” Theodore asked.
Sebastian’s fingers stopped.
“What blood?”
“When you came to my room.”
“It was wine.”
“At four in the morning?”
“I had been in the guesthouse. A glass had broken.”
“Whose?”
“Eleanor’s.”
“Why was she drinking wine?”
“She was frightened.”
“Of what?”
Sebastian stood. “Eat something.”
He left before Theodore could answer.
Rosalie opened her eyes the next afternoon.
Dr. Shah warned them that awareness could come and go, and that speaking might be difficult because of the breathing tube. Sebastian waited outside the room. Theodore was allowed in for three minutes with a nurse at his shoulder.
Rosalie looked smaller than she had inside the coffin. Machines surrounded her, but she seemed less trapped by them. Her hair had been gathered loosely away from her face. The silver locket was gone, sealed by the police in an evidence envelope with her dress and the gray satin strip.
Theodore approached the bed.
Her eyes moved toward him slowly.
“Hey,” he said.
Her fingers shifted beneath the blanket.
He placed his bandaged hand where she could reach it.
Rosalie touched the white gauze, then looked at him with a faint question.
“Glass,” he said. “I broke it.”
Her eyes filled.
“Don’t do that,” he whispered. “They’ll think I’m upsetting you.”
One corner of her mouth tried to move around the tube.
He leaned closer. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”
Her fingers tightened.
“I heard the message. I was mad. Not at you exactly. At everything. I thought you were making another problem, and I already had one, which is a terrible reason, but it’s the reason.”
She blinked once, slowly.
“Did Sebastian do this?”
Her gaze shifted away.
“Eleanor?”
The nurse touched Theodore’s shoulder. “No interrogation.”
“I’m asking my sister.”
“She cannot answer safely.”
Rosalie’s hand moved again. Two fingers lifted from the blanket.
The same two fingers he had seen beneath the broken glass.
They pointed weakly toward the door.
A shadow moved across the narrow window.
Eleanor stood outside.
May you like
Rosalie’s pulse rose sharply on the monitor.
The nurse pressed a call button. “You need to leave now.”
