The Wife He Buried Alive novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: The Boy With the Elephant

The lab drew Winston's blood at seven the next morning, on the fourth floor, in a room with a cartoon giraffe on the wall.

He rolled his sleeve up himself. He did not look at the needle.

The technician told him the first result would take two days.

"Where is he?" Winston asked me.

"Down the hall. Wash your hands."

Bev stood outside Milo's door with her arms folded and her reading glasses on their cord.

She looked Winston up and down.

"You're taller than the photograph," she said, and she opened the door for him.

Milo sat in the middle of the bed in his knit hat, with the gray elephant on his lap and a coloring book open to a purple truck.

He looked up.

Winston stopped inside the doorway and did not come any farther.

"Hi," Milo said. "Are you the doctor?"

"No." Winston's voice cracked on the word. "I'm not a doctor."

"Are you the man in Mama's wallet?"

I had forgotten about the wallet.

I had one photograph in it, the two of us on a dock at his father's lake house, laughing at something outside the frame.

I had taken it out for Milo once, when he was two and asked why other kids had daddies.

Winston looked at me.

"Yes," I said. "He is."

Milo thought about it with great seriousness.

"You're the one who's supposed to give me blood," he said.

"I'd like to."

"Does it hurt?"

"A little. Not for long."

Milo held up the elephant.

"This is Pickle. He doesn't like needles either, but he's brave."

Winston came across the room and crouched beside the bed so that his eyes were level with Milo's.

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