He’d timed everything perfectly.
Then I clicked the last account.
Poppy’s college fund.
We opened it the week she was born.
We put something in every single month.
Even the tight months.
Especially the tight months.
Last spring, it held over fifty-two thousand dollars.
The screen said $9,140.
I refreshed the page.
$9,140.
I scrolled down.
April: $6,000.
May: $8,500.
June: $11,000.
July: $5,000.
August: $7,500.
September: $5,000.
Every withdrawal went to the same place.
Saint Brigid Memorial Patient Accounts.
I closed the laptop.
I opened it again.
The numbers didn’t change.
I went to the sink.
I thought I was going to be sick.
I wasn’t.
I just stood there gripping the counter until my hands stopped shaking.
Then I picked up my phone.
I didn’t call Nate.
I called Denise.
She met me at the Hollow Diner at two.
She was still in her scrubs.
Hers had stains on them.
She slid into the booth across from me.
She didn’t order.
“I figured you’d call,” she said.
“Did you know about the money?”
Her face said no.
Then it said oh no.
“What money?”
I turned my phone around.
I showed her the screen.
She read it.
She put her hand over her mouth.
“That idiot,” she whispered.
“That good, stupid idiot.”
“Tell me about that night,” I said.
“The night before Thanksgiving.”
“He told you?”
“He told me some of it.”
“He told me the on-call surgeon didn’t answer.”
Denise went very still.
“He told you that?”
“He didn’t tell me who.”
She looked out the window.
At the parking lot.
At nothing.
“Denise.”
“I paged him four times,” she said.
“Paged who?”
She didn’t answer.
“Denise, who was on call?”
She looked back at me.
“Ask Owen why he didn’t pick up.”
The diner noise went far away.
The coffee machine.
The cook yelling an order.
All of it.
“Owen,” I said.
“I’ve worked beside Nate for twelve years,” Denise said.
“I watched them walk him out in March.”
“I watched him come back every day and sit with that little girl.”
“I let him up the back stairs.”
“I lied to security for him.”
