Chapter 2 - The Sister Who Never Forgot
I pulled the emergency call cord before Dorian could stop me.
The door opened thirty seconds later to an ICU charge nurse named Evelyn Shaw, who took one look at Silas's rhythm strip and told everyone except the clinical team to get out.
Dorian protested until Evelyn raised her voice.
"You can bring me a court order, or you can clear the room."
He cleared it.
I did not touch the patient again.
My badge had been disabled, and stepping across that line would give Dorian exactly the pretext he wanted.
Instead I placed the photograph on the bedside table, copied the six words into the back of my pocket notebook, and walked to the staff changing room with a tremor I couldn't suppress.
Tessa followed me.
"You're making a terrible mistake," she said.
"Who ordered that declaration?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You watched him demand my signature."
She glanced toward the security camera above the exit.
"The hospital will review your conduct on Monday. Take your things and go home."
"Tessa, a patient who can barely breathe cannot consent to a confession written by somebody else."
"Then file the appropriate report."
Her voice cracked on the final word.
I had known Tessa for six years.
She was meticulous about medication counts and birthday cards; she was not ordinarily a woman who folded because a man wore a tailored suit.
I realized someone had given her a reason to be frightened.
At the employee entrance, a black SUV waited beneath the red emergency light.
I turned the other way, took a bus to the east side, and used a prepaid transit card instead of calling for a ride.
June answered on the third ring.
"I need to ask you something about Dad."
"That's a new way to say hello."
Her joking voice became guarded when I told her who was in the hospital.
June worked as an elementary-school librarian in Jersey City and had built her adult life around predictable hours and clean boundaries.
She hated discussing the waterfront years.
"Did Dad ever take you to the docks?" I asked.
The silence lasted long enough that I checked the signal.
"June?"
"I was little."
"There was a photo of us with Silas Voss."
"Both of us?"
"Me. Dad. Silas. You weren't in it."
Her breath changed.
"He told me you'd never remember."
"Who did?"
"Dad."
I leaned against the bus shelter and watched a woman drag two children around a puddle.
"What did he say?"
"That if anybody asked, I was never at the Morrow warehouse."
For sixteen years, that sentence had lived inside my sister and I had not known it.
She told me about a room that smelled of salt and wet cardboard, a red-haired woman with a cut on her cheek, and an old-fashioned recording machine under a desk.
"Dad was trying to help her," June said.
"Help her do what?"
"Leave. She was crying and said she had heard them arguing about the bridge."
June stopped talking.
I heard a door close on her end of the line.
"I'm coming over," I said.
"Don't."
The word came out sharp enough to hurt.
"Somebody came to the school today. He asked whether I still had Dad's things."
"What did he look like?"
"Gray hair, black coat, scar under his ear. He said he was a family friend."
Dorian Cross wore his hair close to his scalp.
A pale scar curved beneath his right ear.
"Do not go home," I told June. "Go somewhere public. I'll meet you."
She tried to laugh.
"Maya, you're scaring me."
"I'm scared too."
My bus arrived just as a message appeared from an unknown number.
It contained a photograph of my apartment door, taken from the hallway.
Beneath it were four words.
Ask June about tomorrow.
I stared at the message, then at the timetable outside the bus shelter.
May you like
Tomorrow was the sixteenth anniversary of my father's death.
And for the first time, I wondered if the anniversary was a deadline somebody else had been waiting for.
