Chapter 15: Headline

The story went up at midnight.

Dennis read it to me at five in the morning.

He sat on the edge of my hospital bed with his reading glasses pushed up on his head.

The headline said: Dying Boy's Father Torn Away by Jealous Wife.

"It's all in the second paragraph," he said.

"A source close to the family says the sick boy's mother begged for help."

"And?"

"And Stephanie Reeve used her pregnancy to keep her husband from his son."

"Used it."

"Keep going."

"Mrs. Reeve senior says, quote, my daughter-in-law is a good girl who is hurt and frightened."

"That's one sentence."

"Then, quote, I pray she finds the grace to share."

"Grace."

"She said it to me, too."

"She said it to me at breakfast," I said. "In a robe, with a tray."

He took off the glasses.

"Four thousand shares," he said. "Steph, people are writing things under it."

"Don't read me those."

"I'm not going to."

He read one anyway, and then he put the phone face down on his knee and was quiet.

I lay there with my hand on the dressing and looked at the ceiling.

They had already moved me to a wheelchair once, to see the baby at midnight.

She had a tube taped to her cheek and a knitted cap that came down to her eyebrows.

Her whole foot fit under my thumb.

Randall was there at six.

I watched him from behind the glass of the NICU.

He washed his hands for the full three minutes the sign said.

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