“You don’t get to use that,” she said quietly.
“Not tonight.”
“You’re going to sit at the kitchen table.”
“And you’re going to tell me everything.”
“And then we’ll see.”
She walked back into the house.
Owen stood there shaking.
“I’m going to Voss,” he said.
“Dr. Voss?”
“Chief of Surgery.”
“I’m going to tell him.”
“When?”
“Friday.”
“Nate will try to stop you.”
“I know.”
“Nate will say you have a three-month-old.”
“I know.”
“He’ll say it’s not worth it.”
Owen looked at me.
“What do you say?”
I stood there.
For the first time in this whole mess, somebody was asking me.
“I say it’s not my decision,” I said.
“And it’s not Nate’s.”
“It’s yours.”
“Make it yourself.”
“For once, somebody in this family make their own choice.”
Nate came home at six-fifteen.
Again.
Like nothing.
Except this time, he wasn’t wearing scrubs.
Jeans.
A gray sweater.
No badge.
I had the laptop open on the kitchen table.
The college fund on the screen.
He saw it from the doorway.
He stopped.
“Forty-three thousand dollars,” I said.
He set down his keys.
Carefully this time.
“I was going to replace it.”
“With what?”
“The new job.”
“Oregon.”
“Oregon,” he said.
“So that’s the other reason.”
“That’s why you picked a town I’ve never heard of.”
“They pay more.”
“They offered a signing bonus.”
“It would have covered most of it.”
“Most of it.”
“Nate, what did you pay for?”
He sat down.
“Her bills.”
“Maddie’s?”
“Rachel’s insurance capped out in March.”
“The hospital sent her to collections.”
“They were going to garnish her wages.”
“She was about to lose her apartment.”
“While her kid was lying in a hospital bed.”
“Because of my mistake.”
“So you paid it.”
“Anonymously.”
“Through the patient accounts office.”
“She thinks some church covered it.”
“She prays for them every night.”
“She told me so.”
I looked at the screen.
At the number.
At the name on the account.
Poppy’s name.
“You spent our daughter’s future on somebody else’s daughter,” I said.
He looked up at me.
His voice cracked right down the middle.
