Susan scratched at the fine scrape on her neck. It hadn’t needed stitches. A fine crust of scab had already formed at the places where Karim’s blade had nicked her flesh.

“Don’t pick,” her mother said, and the clicking started again.

Henry had stopped by with updates. Archie was out of surgery, in the recovery room. They knew that much. But Susan wouldn’t feel right until she saw him.

In the distance, the OHSU aerial tram glided silently up the hill, over the houses of John’s Landing. It carried hospital workers and patients from the medical buildings at the top of the hill to the medical buildings OHSU had at the South Waterfront. It had been controversial at first. No one in John’s Landing wanted it built. But Susan thought the silver, egglike tram had a strange, graceful beauty.

“She’s long gone by now,” Susan said to her mother, and they both knew who she meant.

Chapter 46

CHAPTER

46

Susan was still at the window when Leo Reynolds walked into her hospital room. She had been expecting some news about Archie, or the nurse with her discharge papers, and her face must have registered a flicker of disappointment because Leo stopped dead in his tracks.

He stood just inside the door, hands in the pockets of his smart-looking suit. There was an awkwardness to his bearing that Susan had never seen before. His easy confidence had an edge of nervousness to it.

“Come in,” she said.

He glanced at Bliss.

Susan’s mother made a humming sound and stood up. “Well, I think I’ll go find a chai latte,” she said. Then she left the room without her purse.

Susan stayed next to the window. Leo stayed where he was, just inside the door. The gap between their bodies felt like a canyon.

“Sorry about your dad,” Susan said. She knew what it was to lose a father, even a nasty one like Jack Reynolds.

“Thanks,” Leo said quietly. His hands were still in his pockets. He seemed drained. There were dark circles under his eyes. His shoulders hung. The jittery affect she’d noticed the last few times she’d seen him was gone. He was unusually still.

He’d lost everyone in his family, she realized—his mother when he was young, and now both his siblings and his father to violence. Her eyes went automatically to Bliss’s purse, her knitting materials splayed out on the seat of her chair. She missed the sound of the wooden sticks.

“How are you?” Leo asked.

“Fine,” Susan said. She forced a laugh and pointed to her bandaged head. “This is my Halloween costume. I’m going as a World War I vet just back from the Battle of Cantigny.” Susan waited a beat, but Leo didn’t smile. “All the nurses thought it was funny,” she said.

“How are you, really?” Leo asked.