Chapter 4
The hospital kept Sophie overnight.
Her oxygen level returned to normal, but the doctor wanted to watch her after the cold-water exposure.
I sat beside the bed with one hand around her foot.
Grant waited outside the room.
Someone had bandaged his palm. He still wore the wet shirt from the gala.
I felt grateful that he had found her.
I hated myself for feeling it.
I also felt something worse.
Relief.
Sophie had heard him reject her. If she disliked him, she would not want to know him. If she never wanted him, she could never decide that six years with me had not been enough.
The thought was ugly.
I pushed it away before I had to name it.
Sophie woke shortly after midnight.
“Mom?” Sophie whispered.
“I’m here,” I said.
“Where’s Bunny?” Sophie asked.
I placed the damp rabbit beside her.
“Was the song bad?” Sophie asked.
“No.”
“Then why did everybody get mad?” she asked.
“They weren’t angry about your music.”
“Mr. Hale looked angry at me,” Sophie said.
“He was frightened about the hotel. Frightened adults sometimes say cruel things.”
Sophie frowned.
“You were frightened when I was gone. You weren’t cruel.”
I smoothed her hair because I did not have an answer.
The doctor returned with a form.
“I need to confirm her date of birth.”
I gave it quietly.
Through the glass wall, Grant lifted his head.
Sophie had been born eight months after I left Blackwood Bay.
I watched him count.
Before Grant entered, a nurse asked me to update Sophie’s emergency contacts. My name filled the first line. The second remained blank.
“No other parent or relative?” the nurse asked.
“A trusted friend is in the city. The roads are closed.”
I wrote my friend’s number rather than Grant’s.
Six years earlier, the same blank line had appeared on Sophie’s birth paperwork. I had believed an empty space was safer than a name connected to the Hale family.
Now Grant stood on the other side of the glass after carrying her out of a flooded passage. The line was still empty.
I could not decide whether that proved I had protected Sophie or only that I had become good at living around an absence.
When the doctor left, he entered the room.
“May I speak to her?”
“For one minute.”
Grant stayed near the door.
“Sophie, I owe you an apology.”
She pulled the blanket higher.
“You said I don’t have anything to do with you,” Sophie said.
“I said something cruel because I thought someone was using you to hurt the hotel.”
“I don’t know how to use a hotel.”
“I understand that now.”
“Mom says presents don’t fix mean words.”
“Your mother is right.”
Sophie studied him.
“I forgive you a little,” she said.
“That is more than I deserve.”
“I still don’t like you,” Sophie added.
“That’s fair.”
He placed the silver star from her dress on the bedside table and left.
I followed him into the hall.
“Do not question her. Do not send anyone to investigate us.”
His expression changed.
“Why would I investigate a six-year-old?”
I had said too much.
Grant looked through the glass at Sophie. Then back at me.
“Why does she have my mother’s eyes?”