She Discovered Too Late novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Nine-One-One

The lobby of Ellingham Holdings was marble from the door to the elevators.

Colby stood in the middle of it in a hospital gown.

He had a man's overcoat over his shoulders and a strip of tape on the back of his hand where the IV had been.

His skin had gone the color of old mustard. Two security guards stood a polite distance away, not touching him.

Thirty or forty employees had stopped on the stairs and at the reception desk to watch.

I had come down in the elevator with Miriam, standing in the corner. Our uncle came behind us, one hand on the rail.

"Miri," Colby said.

His voice carried to the glass doors.

"Thank God. They told me you were upstairs, tearing the family apart."

"Go back to the hospital, Colby," Miriam said.

"I will, if you tell me you didn't mean it."

He turned to the staircase and spread his hands.

"She's grieving, everyone. She's not herself."

"A dead man got to her, and she's throwing out the one person who stayed."

"I stayed. I was twelve, and I stayed in that house when nobody else would."

Nobody on the stairs said anything.

A woman from accounting looked at her shoes. A young man at the reception desk had stopped typing.

"You had a voicemail from me this morning," Colby said to Miriam. "I begged you to come."

"I heard it."

"Then why are you standing there and looking at me like that?"

"Because I have listened to the recording," Miriam said, in a flat voice. "I know what you said to the paramedic."

A ripple went through the stairs.

She had not raised her voice, and the lobby carried every word.

"You said you found me," Miriam said.

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