He Let Our Daughter Die to Save His Mistress Chapter 06

He Let Our Daughter Die to Save His Mistress Chapter 06

They zip-tied my wrists to the iron railing at the bottom of the garden steps and left me there at 9:20 in the

morning.

The rain came back at noon.

I watched Royce carry the bag down the drive and swing it into the back of a landscaping truck, and the truck

went out through the gates, and I never found out where it went. I have spent money trying. There are four

transfer stations that serve that county. My daughter is in one of them.

I didn’t cry, exactly. My face was wet anyway.

At some point Damien came out onto the terrace with an umbrella and stood there looking at me through the

rain. He took one step toward the stairs. I saw his hand come up.

Then Sienna’s voice floated out behind him – “Damien, I’m bleeding again, I’m scared, don’t leave me” – and

his hand dropped.

“This is a lesson,” he called down to me. “Tomorrow morning I want to see Lily at the hospital, and I want to

hear her call Sienna mom. Don’t test me again.”

Then he went inside, and the terrace lights went out, and it rained on me for nine hours.

Eleanor’s car came through the gates at ten that night.

She had the family attorney with her, Ruth Delaney, who is seventy-six and has been cutting the Ashfords’ contracts since before Damien was born. Ruth cut the ties with a pair of kitchen shears and Eleanor put her own coat over me and screamed at the security men in a voice that took the paint off them.

They got a doctor – a real one to the old house by midnight. I’d lost enough blood to need two units. He asked me twice, quietly, if I wanted to make a police report.

“Not yet,” I said.

Eleanor sat by that bed all night. In the morning, she got down on the floor again, and this time I didn’t stop her, because there are some apologies a person has to be allowed to make.

“Tell me what you want,” she said. “Anything the Ashfords have. Say it.”

“Nothing,” I said. “I want out.”

Naomi came for me at noon – Naomi, who slept in the bunk under mine at St. Brigid’s Home for four years,

who is now the director of it. Her car has a hundred and ninety thousand miles on it and a booster seat in the

back.

“Gracie,” she said, when she saw my face. “Oh, honey.”

put Lily’s yellow raincoat in Eleanor’s hands.

“She wore it the day she learned to whistle,” I said. “You should have something.”

Eleanor pressed it against her mouth and made a sound I’ve only ever heard in trauma bays.

“He’ll come looking for you,” she said.

“He won’t find me. And Eleanor.- before you go after him, get the surveillance from the trauma bay. All of it. Get the pharmacy audit. Get the resident. And get the OR board log with the timestamps.” Izipped my bag. “You’ll want to see who moved Sienna’s name to the top. It wasn’t the charge nurse.”

Then I got in Naomi’s car, and we drove out through the gates, and I did not look back at that house.

The next morning, my husband sat in a private room on the fourth floor of Ashford Memorial, peeling an orange into neat spirals for the woman in the bed, and watching the door.

Waiting for me to walk in with our daughter.

The door opened at 9:40.

It was Eleanor.

Behind her came Ruth Delaney with a briefcase, two hospital security officers, and the Chief of Staff.

Damien stood up, annoyed, already talking. “Grandmother

did Grace call you again? Let me guess, she

won’t hand over Lily. I swear to God, I have been more than patient with that woman-”

Eleanor crossed the room and slapped him across the face with everything a ninety-one-year-old woman has.

“Today,” she said, “is your daughter’s funeral.”