Chapter 13: The Corridor

Percy Wexford had been in the hospital corridor for three hours when Camille came down it with two coffees.

Across the corridor from where he stood, behind the glass, his grandmother lay with a tube in her arm and her silver hair flat on the pillow.

The doctor had said a clot, and the next two days, and nothing more.

Imogen was inside, holding the old woman's hand.

Percy had stepped out because he could not stand to watch her do it so steadily.

"Oh, Percy," Camille said. "You're gray."

She set the coffees on the sill, stepped close, and straightened his collar with two quick tugs.

His body knew the gesture.

It had been done to him every morning for years, and today he felt it as a stranger's touch.

His own phone sat in his breast pocket, and his thumb had pressed the red circle before she reached him.

"She's been in there all night," Camille said. "Playing the devoted wife."

"She has."

"For an audience of one dying woman. Doesn't that tell you something?"

Percy looked at the floor.

"I woke up this morning next to a woman I don't know," he said. "And my grandmother is behind that glass. I don't know what is real any more, Cam."

"Then let me tell you."

"Tell me one true thing." His voice cracked, and he let it. "Did she trap me?"

Camille's eyes lit.

He had seen that look across a hundred dinner tables, and for three years he had taken it for kindness.

"Do you really want to know?"

"I want it from you."

"No," Camille said softly. "She didn't."

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