Chapter 11: Nobody's Wife

Hallie's POV

Kip didn't say a word about the pills until I was sitting on his couch with a cup of tea in my hands.

Then he set the plastic box on the coffee table between us.

"I took this off the lobby floor," he said. "I should have given it back. I'm sorry."

"What's in it?"

"Two medications. Tacrolimus and mycophenolate."

"I don't know what those are."

"They're anti-rejection drugs." He said it slowly. "You take them after an organ transplant, Hallie. For the rest of your life."

I looked at the white capsules.

I had counted them out every Sunday for three years, with the radio on.

"He told me it was blood pressure."

"I know."

I put the cup down because my hand was shaking.

"Hallie," Kip said. "This isn't my business. But you filled this box, and nobody should be lied to about what they're holding."

I opened the yellow folder on my knees and turned it so he could read the last page.

Introduce at the Hartwell benefit. Keep him quiet about his health.

He read it twice.

"She set you up to meet him," he said.

"She picked me. And she wrote it down like an item on a to-do list."

"Do you know why?"

"No." My voice cracked. "I don't know why anyone would."

"Then we ask him."

"We?"

"I'll stand where you tell me to stand," Kip said. "Close enough to hear. Far enough that it's yours."

I slept on his couch again, and he slept upstairs.

In the morning the sky was gray and low.

I asked him to drive me to the cemetery in Grove City, where my daughter lay under a small square of new grass.

There was no stone yet. Only a marker with a plastic sleeve, and a name typed on a card.