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
Right, I guess this conversation is over. She resists the urge to slam on the brakes again, sending him flying into the dash. They drive the rest of the way in silence.
When they get to the hospital, there are still a few reporters standing outside the doors. They try to slip by unnoticed, but one of them, a beautiful young woman with long brown hair and overly made-up eyes, recognizes them and extends a microphone towards them as they cross the lobby. “Excuse me, you’re relatives of Katherine Parker, aren’t you? Do you have time to answer a few questions?”
“Get out of my way,” Shawn says, pushing aside the microphone.
“I’m sorry,” Katriina says automatically, then cringes as Shawn glares at her. She feels under her sleeve for the elastic.
When they get to the eighth floor, Shawn goes to talk to one of the doctors, and Katriina goes into Kate’s room and sits in the chair next to her bed. Kate’s breathing is shallow, noisy, but her face is peaceful. Her hair is matted, and Katriina leans over, prising apart the knotted strands with her fingers before smoothing it down with her palm. She is startled by how warm Kate is. She holds her hand to Kate’s forehead, realizing as she does that Kate is not running a temperature, she is simply alive where Katriina had assumed she would be cold, lifeless.
As Katriina draws her hand away, she can feel Shawn in the doorway, watching her. “I lost the baby,” she says, without looking up.
When she finally does look up, Shawn is gone. She collapses against Kate in the bed, willing her to wake up, to reach out to Katriina, to tell her something about Shawn that only a mother would know. But there is no comfort there, just an unrelenting heartbeat. Katriina can’t stand it anymore – the panic gnawing at her insides, the desperate need for distraction – and so she dumps the contents of her purse onto the bed, pawing through the pile until she finds a nail file, which she cleanly and swiftly stabs into her thigh. The relief is immediate, followed by a guilt so crippling that she shoves everything haphazardly back into her purse and bolts from the room without looking back.
NINE
