She pressed the paper flat against her chest.
Her shoulders shook.
That was when the elevator at the end of the hallway dinged.
The doors slid open.
A woman stepped out in a champagne silk gown, a Hermès Birkin hanging from her forearm and a Cartier bracelet flashing at her wrist.
Henrietta Ziegler.
Jonathan’s mother.
And her eyes went straight to us.
PART 3
The third-floor hallway went quiet the way a room does when a storm door opens.
Two nurses froze at the station.
A man in a waiting chair lowered his paper cup.
Henrietta Ziegler walked straight down the corridor, her heels clicking like a clock.
She stopped three feet from my mother.
“There she is,” she said, loud enough for the whole floor. “The aide.”
My mother stood very still, the pages pressed to her chest.
“Henrietta, my husband is in this hospital because of what you people did to—”
