“You might want to go home and get some rest,” the doctor said. “He’s going to be in recovery for hours yet.”

“I can’t leave him,” Mary Beth said. “I need to be here, but the rest of you should go. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Sue said.

“We’ll let you know as soon as you can see him,” the doctor said before she left them.

Mary Beth convinced everyone else to go home for the time being, promising to call as soon as Tom was awake—and promising she would get something to eat at some point.

“I don’t feel right leaving you,” Erin said.

“I’m going to curl up on the sofa and try to sleep.” Mary Beth gestured to the small sofa in the waiting room. “You go on home, and I’ll call you the second I hear any news.”

“If you’re sure,” Erin said.

“I’m very sure. You guys must be tired. Let’s sleep while we can.” She handed her keys to Erin and told her where to find the car. “I had to drive because there wasn’t room for me in the rescue wagon.”

Erin’s heart ached at the thought of her mom’s lonely drive to the hospital, not knowing what was happening to her husband on the way.

Slim kept his arm around Erin as they walked out of the hospital into the cold morning air. It took a few minutes to find the car in the crowded parking lot. Erin handed him the keys. “You’d better drive. I’m still groggy from the Xanax.”

“No problem.”

Erin directed him out of the city to I-76 West to Bryn Mawr.

“Am I going to get to see where you grew up?”

“In all its glory.”

“Why have I heard of that town before?”

“There’s a very prestigious women’s college there. Lots of famous graduates.”

“Ahhh, that’s it.”

After a thirty-minute drive, they arrived at Erin’s childhood home, a two-story white colonial with black shutters, a big front porch and a white picket fence that was tricked out with greens for the holiday season. She punched in the code to the cypher lock—her and Toby’s birthday—on the back door and led Slim into the house where the scent of Christmas pine and spices greeted them.

Erin hung their coats in the foyer and led Slim into the kitchen, which had wide knotty-pine floors, white cabinets and stainless appliances that her parents had bought last summer when they renovated the kitchen.

“What a nice house,” Slim said, taking it all in.

“It was a wreck when they bought it. They’ve restored every inch of it over the last thirty-five years.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“What do you want most? Food or sleep?”

“I could eat something, but we can go out, if you want. You don’t have to entertain me.”