I walked into the hallway so Jake would not wake.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Christine began to cry.
For twelve years, I had known the different shapes of her silence. There was the silence she used when she was angry, the silence she used when she was protecting someone’s feelings, and the quiet, distant silence that arrived whenever I asked about her childhood.
This was none of those.
This was fear.
“Dad showed me something,” she whispered.
“What?”
“A file.”
The word seemed to change the temperature around me.
“What kind of file?”
“It has your name on it.”
“Christine, listen carefully. Do not touch anything else. Do not give them your phone. Walk outside and come to the hospital.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the file says you were investigating my family before we met.”
For a moment, the hospital disappeared.
I heard only the faint electrical buzz above me and Christine’s uneven breathing.
