I Was Done Begging novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Full Price

The morning of the hearing, Lucas drove me to the courthouse and did not say a word until the second red light.

"I have to tell you something before we go in," he said.

"Is it bad?"

"It's mine."

He kept his eyes on the road.

"Three years ago I went to the Lacombe Foundation's hospital wing on a donor visit for your father."

"Okay."

"I sat in the lobby of the coma ward for forty minutes. The visitors' log was on the desk. It said Lacombe, Mrs. Julien, room 412."

I turned in my seat.

"I signed that page under it," Lucas said.

"I was six years into looking for a missing girl."

"I walked past the room where you were lying, and I never asked who she was."

"You didn't know."

"I should have asked. A nurse told me the patient was twenty-five, with no family but her husband. I heard it, and I left."

His hands were tight on the wheel.

"You'd have been the right age. You'd have been right there."

The light turned green and he didn't move.

A horn went off behind us.

I put my hand over his on the gearshift.

"Lucas, look at me."

He did.

"You were looking for a three-year-old in a church-fair photograph."

"The only people who knew I was alive were Julien and his mother, and they made sure no one else did."

"I know that."

"Then know this. You sat outside my door for forty minutes, and I'm glad someone from my family was in that building."

His eyes closed.

A truck pulled around us, and the driver shouted something out of the window.

"Drive," I said. "We're going to be late, and I want to watch them lose."

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