“I’ll tell her you’re here,” Nathan said. “I promise.”
Inside the treatment room, Claire looked even smaller than she had in his arms. She was lying on a narrow bed with an IV in her arm. Her brown hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and her eyes opened with effort when he entered.
The first thing she did was try to sit up.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Whitmore.”
Nathan crossed the room quickly. “Don’t get up.”
“I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I’ll be back tomorrow. I just got dizzy. It won’t happen again.”
“You are not coming back tomorrow.”
Her face went blank with fear.
The fear was immediate. Not disappointment. Not frustration. Fear.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t fire me. I need this job.”
Nathan stared at her.
He had been accused of many things in his life. Being cold. Being obsessed with work. Being impossible to impress. Being too guarded after Evelyn’s death. But he had never seen someone look at him as if he were the hand that could push her into ruin with one sentence.
“I’m not firing you,” he said.
Claire’s eyes filled with tears anyway.
“My mother is sick,” she said quickly, as if the explanation might save her. “She has heart problems. Her medication is expensive. I can’t miss work. I can’t lose the income. I can do better. I can work faster.”
“Claire.”
“I know I’m slow sometimes with the laundry because the boys ask me things, and I know I shouldn’t stop to play with them when there’s work, but they get sad, and Owen won’t eat unless someone sits with him, and Lucas has nightmares, and I thought if I just stayed a little later I could finish everything.”
Nathan could not speak.
She was apologizing for loving his children.
She was apologizing for doing what he had failed to do.
“How many meals did you eat today?” he asked quietly.
Claire looked away.
“Claire.”
“I had coffee this morning.”
“That’s not a meal.”
“I was going to eat after I finished dinner for the boys.”
“And yesterday?”
Her silence answered him.
Nathan stepped back and covered his mouth with one hand. His throat burned.
Outside that room, he was a man whose name opened doors. Inside it, he felt like a coward standing in front of the truth.
“My sons called you Aunt Claire,” he said.
A tear slid down her cheek.
“I told them not to.”
“Why?”
“Because I work for you. I didn’t want to overstep.”
“You sing Evelyn’s song.”
Claire’s face crumpled.
“Owen cried the first week I was there,” she whispered. “He cried until he couldn’t breathe. He said his mom used to sing about stars. I didn’t know the exact song, but he hummed it. So I learned it from him.”
Nathan looked at the IV bag.
The drip.
The tape on her skin.
The woman who had learned a dead mother’s lullaby because two little boys were drowning in grief and their father was too busy to notice.
“I need to ask you something,” Nathan said. “And I need the truth. What has been happening in my house?”
