Chapter 8: The Lobby Recording

"Judith," Courtney said on the recording. "Not so loud."

"Who is going to hear me?" Judith said. "Her mother is upstairs screaming at a nurse."

A chair scraped.

Mom's phone was on her knee behind the plant, and I could hear them settle onto a bench ten feet away.

"I'm sorry she's gone," Courtney said. "I really am."

"Are you?"

"A little. It would have been nicer if she'd just moved to Arizona."

Judith laughed, low and pleased.

I lay in the ICU bed and gripped the rail.

"Annie told him herself that she cheated," Judith said.

"He only believed her because I made him see it first."

"I called him that afternoon and said, 'Go to the hospital lot, honey. Look at her car.'"

"He parked right where I told him, and he watched her kiss that mechanic."

"It was my five hundred dollars," she said. "Best money I ever spent."

"You didn't tell him she was sick," Courtney said.

"Of course not. He would have stayed. He would have thrown away London for a girl with a tumor."

"He'd have wasted his life at a bedside, Courtney. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Courtney said. "I was nineteen, and you called me into your kitchen and showed me his picture."

"You wanted him."

"I did. And you said, 'Make him believe she's seeing someone, and I'll make sure he looks at you when it's over.'"

"I never said that."

"You said it with your eyebrows."

Mom made a small noise beside my bed.

I looked at her.

Her jaw was set, and her eyes were wet.

The recording kept going.

"The picture of her friend's truck, that was mine," Courtney said. "And the email about the clinic. I wrote it from a library computer."

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