Chapter 4: Her Part in It

"She hasn't said anything about her mother," I told Alan. "Why would she?"

"No reason."

"Alan."

"Monday, Glenda. I'll explain Monday."

The line went dead.

I stood in the hallway with the phone in my hand and the vending machine humming at my elbow.

My husband had never once hung up on me.

I went back to Teddy's bed and did not sleep.

At seven the next morning a nurse took his temperature and said the swelling was down to his wrist.

By nine he was sitting up, eating applesauce, and asking whether snakes could smell fear.

"Some of them smell with their tongues," Bernice told him from the corner. "That one smelled a boy standing on its tail."

"I didn't see his tail."

"That's what a good tail is for."

He laughed, and it was the best sound I had heard in a day.

Then the door opened, and the laugh stopped.

Luke came in first, in yesterday's scrubs, with shadows under his eyes.

Shelby came in behind him with a bouquet of yellow roses and a stuffed rabbit.

She had changed her face.

Her eyes were red and soft, and her ponytail was loose, and she held the roses in front of her with both hands.

"Mrs. Fennimore," she said. "May I come in?"

I did not answer.

Teddy slid down under his blanket until only his white streak of hair showed.

"I'm so sorry," Shelby said, and she cried right on cue.

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