Chapters (46)
- Cover
- Other Titles
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Friday
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- Saturday
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Sunday
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Monday
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Walter has to show ID at the nurses’ station to get into Kate’s room. “It’s for her security. You understand,” the young nurse informs him. She is small and blond and wearing a pair of pink scrubs, her girlishness belying her authority. She refuses to even look at Walter until he shows her his boating licence.
“It’s all I have with me,” he says.
She studies the picture, then raises her head. “You’re the husband.”
“Yes.” For some reason Walter feels like he should apologize for this. The nurse leads him down the hall, Walter following along like a child trying to keep up with his mother. She pushes open a door and gestures inside. Walter steps across the threshold tentatively, as though he’s entering another dimension.
“Dr. Penfield will be along shortly if there’s anything you want to ask him,” the nurse says, shutting the door behind her.
Finally, Walter is alone with Kate. She is lying on her back, her head turned slightly towards the window. Her face is puffy and bruised, and her hair is matted against the pillow. He tries to remember the last time they were alone together like this, no children or grandchildren demanding their attention. It must have been months.
“Hi, Katie,” Walter says. She doesn’t move. He walks over to the side of the bed and takes her hand, immediately thinking back to all the other times he has done this in a hospital: the birth of the twins, her mastectomy, her broken leg. And now this, whatever this is. Unexpectedly, he feels tears sliding down his cheeks. Where was he? When she was going over the falls, when she was alone with the twins, when she fell through the ice. Where the goddamn hell was he?
“I’m here now, okay, Katie?” he says. He can’t stop the tears, so he just stands there with her hand in his, saying over and over again, “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.”
He wants her to know, even if he’s not sure it matters anymore.
EIGHT
Things Katriina hates herself for thinking: how, with Kate in the hospital, the logistics of her life have gotten monumentally harder; how she has been back and forth across town more in the past twenty-four hours than she has in the past month. Not that she would complain about it, even as she heads back across town yet again, trucking the boys from Hanna’s place to the grocery store to pick up steaks and salad greens before returning to Victor Street for Finn’s big welcome-home dinner that Nicki has unexpectedly insisted they have.