He Begged Me to Forgive Her, Then Lost Everything novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Statement
Willa gives her statement over her husband's lawyer, turns down his mother's price, and walks out with $41 after he cancels her card; in the garage a caterer says he filmed the stairs.
The detective sat on the rolling stool where I usually sit to chart.
He opened his notebook on his knee and clicked his pen.
"Tell it from the top of the stairs, Mrs. Lowry."
"Kinsale," I said. "Willa Kinsale. I kept my name at work."
He wrote it down without looking up.
Warner's lawyer had arrived while I was still working out how to sit.
He was a narrow man in a camel coat who had smiled at me at three Christmas dinners without once remembering my job.
He stood at the head of my bed and cleared his throat.
"My client's wife is on medication and has suffered a loss. Any statement taken today is not reliable."
"I'm on Tylenol," I said. "Hattie, what's my last dose?"
"Four hours ago," Hattie said from the door. "Six hundred milligrams. I charted it myself."
"Then I'm clear enough," I said.
When I finished, the detective turned a page.
"Anything you haven't said yet?" he asked. "Anything small."
Warner pushed off the wall and set my ring on the bed tray, very gently.
I slid the tray away from him.
"There was a flash," I said. "Up on the service balcony, just before I went over. Something gold, like a button catching the light."
"A guest?"
"The balcony is staff only. Somebody was standing up there."
His pen stopped.
"I've done this nineteen years," he said.
"Forty people with champagne all saw something different, and every one of them will repeat what Mrs. Lowry's lawyer tells them."
"One person with a reason to be looking down is worth all of them."
He closed the notebook.
"Mrs. Lowry's lawyer called my captain before I got here. I want you to know what you're walking into."
"I know what I'm walking into," I said. "I'm walking out of it."
Hattie got me into a wheelchair, because hospital policy is hospital policy even when it is your hospital.
She pushed me down the corridor with my belongings in a clear plastic bag on my lap.
My phone.
My cardigan.
The paper bracelet with my own name on it.
Halfway to the elevator, Constance stepped out of the family lounge and stood in front of the chair.
Hattie braked so hard the bag slid.
"Walk with me, Willa," Constance said.
"I can't walk. I'm in a wheelchair."
"Then ride with me."
She fell in beside us with the same calm she brought to the Foundation's quarterly meetings.
"Warner is a very good man who has done one weak thing," she said.
"I have always been fond of you. You are practical."
"So let's be practical. Name a figure."
I turned my head and looked up at her.
"For what?"
"For your trouble. For the loss." She put the word down carefully, like a dish she did not want to chip. "For the discretion."
"What figure did you have in mind for a grandchild?"
Constance did not break stride.
"That baby was not born, dear."
Hattie made a small noise behind me.
"No," I said. "Fourteen weeks. She had fingernails."
For the first time, Constance's mouth tightened.
I knew then that I had hit something real, and that it was not grief.
"I'm not selling you what you already threw away," I said. "Keep your figure."
She lifted her chin and let go of my chair.
"Everyone sells, Willa. The only question is how much you've lost by the time you do."
The elevator opened.
Hattie rolled me in, and Constance stood outside it with her hands folded, watching the doors close on her face.
My phone buzzed in the plastic bag.
I fished it out with my thumb.
Warner, on a thread I'd have sworn he had not touched since our first date.
"Mother's lawyer says it's better for everyone if the accounts are separate for now. I've suspended your card. I love you. Please think."
I read it twice.
The card was the one he had put on his own account the week we married, so I'd never have to worry.
I had never worried.
That was the thing about it.
"Hattie," I said. "How much cash do I have in my locker?"
She was already digging in her scrub pocket.
"Forty-one dollars, because I stole the five last Tuesday for the vending machine."
"You're staying with me. Don't argue, I already changed the sheets."
"I wasn't going to argue."
"Good. I had a speech."
We rode down to the parking garage in silence.
She helped me out of the chair beside her little blue hatchback.
She was reaching for the passenger door when somebody said, from behind a concrete pillar, "Ma'am?"
A man stepped into the light.
He was maybe twenty-five, in a black catering jacket with a gold pin on the lapel.
The pin read LOWRY HOUSE EVENTS.
He held his phone up in front of him.
He looked terrified.
"You don't know me," he said. "I worked the Founders' dinner. I was on the service balcony, over the stairs."
My heart did something slow and heavy.
"I filmed it," he said. "Nobody's asked me."
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