Chapter 2 - ROOM 614
I stepped into the hallway before David could block me.
“What’s in Room 614?”
“Please,” he said, following.
“Is Marcus in there?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going.”
David caught up beside the elevator and kept his hands to himself.
“You deserve the truth, Claire, but it is complicated.”
“The word complicated has done enough damage to my marriage.”
On the sixth floor, the noise of the hospital seemed to drop away.
The nurses there knew my face.
That made everything worse.
At the far end of the hall stood a closed door and a familiar brown coat hanging from a hook outside it.
Marcus’s coat.
I had bought it for him for our tenth anniversary.
Before I reached the door, a woman in a pale cardigan appeared carrying a folder.
She was perhaps thirty-eight, with tired green eyes and a hospital visitor badge.
She stopped when she saw me.
“You’re Claire.”
“And you are?”
“Rebecca Shaw.”
David approached behind me.
“Rebecca, not now.”
She looked at him with open contempt.
“When, David?”
Her hand tightened around the folder.
“My son is running out of time.”
I looked from one to the other.
“What son?”
Rebecca’s face drained of color.
David spoke sharply.
“Rebecca, stop.”
The door swung open.
Marcus stood in the threshold, thinner than I remembered, one hand braced against the frame.
For a moment his eyes met mine with naked relief.
Then he saw Rebecca.
His expression collapsed.
“Claire,” he whispered.
I held the lunch bag up like evidence.
“I brought you lunch.”
He looked at it, and tears gathered in his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
Rebecca stepped between us.
“Tell her who Daniel is,” she said.
Marcus said nothing.
I felt the floor disappear a second time.
“Marcus,” I asked, “who is Daniel?”
Rebecca opened the folder and turned it toward me.
The first page was a birth certificate.
May you like
Under the space marked Father was my husband’s full name.
