“What time is your first patient?” he asked.
“Nine a.m.”
Cheryl’s practice saw patients three days a week starting promptly at nine a.m. The other two weekdays were saved for surgery. Cheryl was a transplant surgeon. It was, without a doubt, the most interesting field of medicine. She mostly worked on kidney and liver transplants, which was both high-stakes and challenging, but her patients, unlike other surgeons’， always needed a great deal of follow-up, often years’ worth, so she could see the results of her labor. In order to become a transplant surgeon, you start with general surgery （six years in her case at Boston General） plus one year of research plus another two years of a fellowship in transplant surgery. It had been staggeringly difficult, but after the disasters, after the tragedy and the fallout, the medical center—her education, her occupation, her calling, her patients—had sustained her.
Her work. And Ronald, of course.
She met her husband’s eye and smiled. He smiled back. She could see the concern etched on his handsome face. She gave her head the smallest of shakes as if to say all was fine. But it was not fine.
Why was Rachel at Briggs Penitentiary?
The answer was obvious, of course. She was visiting David. On one level, okay, fine, do your thing. David and Rachel had always been close. He’d been up there for nearly five years now. Maybe Rachel felt that was enough time. Maybe she felt she should reach out, that he deserved some level of, if not support, sustenance. Maybe, with all the professional and personal heartache in Rachel’s life over the past year, Rachel would find—what?—comfort in visiting a man who had always believed in her and her dreams.
No.
It had to be something else. In the same way Cheryl loved being a surgeon, Rachel had loved her job as an investigative journalist. She had lost it all in a snap, fair or not, and now she wasn’t the same. Simple as that. Her sister had been wounded. The experience had changed her, and not for the better. Rachel used to be reliable. Now her judgment was something Cheryl constantly questioned.
But why would she be at Briggs?
Perhaps she saw David as an opportunity. David had not spoken to the press. Not ever. He had never told his side of the story, as though there was one, or tried to elaborate on his own theory about what had happened that awful night. So maybe that was Rachel’s game. Her sister was still an investigative journalist at heart, so maybe she went to visit David on the pretense of caring about him. She was good at being a sympathetic ear, at getting people to open up. Perhaps Rachel could get a story out of David, a huge headline-making, true-crime-podcast type of story, and maybe, just maybe, Rachel could use that to regain her professional standing and get “uncanceled.”
But would Rachel really do that?
Would Cheryl’s own sister dredge all this horror up again, rip apart Cheryl’s sutures （to use a surgical analogy） just to get back in the game? Could Rachel be so cold?
“How are you feeling?” Ronald asked.
“Great.”
He smiled at her. “Is it corny or romantic to say my wife looks extra-hot pregnant?”
“Neither,” she said. “More like you’re horny and trying to get some.”
Ronald faked a gasp and put a hand to his chest. “Moi?”
She shook her head. “Men.”
“We are a predictable lot.”
She was pregnant. Such an all-consuming marvel. And it had happened so easily this time. Ronald was watching her again, so she forced up a smile. They had redone the kitchen last year, knocking down a wall, expanding the space by fifteen feet, adding a mudroom （for when they had muddied little feet traipsing through the backyard）， putting in floor-to-ceiling windows, and topping it off with a six-burner Viking stove and oversized Northland Master Series refrigerator and freezer. Ronald had designed the kitchen. He liked to cook.
Maybe, Cheryl thought, it was simpler. Maybe Rachel had figured that it was finally time to reach out to her ex-brother-in-law. Cheryl could sympathize with that. Hadn’t she wanted to stand by her then-husband too? Hadn’t Cheryl stayed by David’s side, even when the investigation began to circle back to him? The idea of David hurting Matthew was preposterous. At the time, she would have believed space aliens had been responsible for the brutal murder over her husband.
But as the evidence mounted, doubt started to burrow its way under her skin and fester. The two of them hadn’t been good for months, their marriage a plane on nosedive though Cheryl told herself they’d gain control of the aircraft in time and pull out of the plunge. They had been together a long time—since their junior year at Revere High. Good times, bad times, they always stayed together. They’d have made it.
But would they have?
Maybe not this time. That’s the thing with trust. Once David lost it in her, nothing was the same. And once she lost it in him…
As the suspicion started to circle in, Cheryl tried to maintain a supportive facade, but David saw through it. He reacted by pushing her away. The strain of it became an unbearable weight. By the time the trial rolled around, by the time the courtroom surprises came to light, the marriage was over.
In the end, David had murdered their son. And Cheryl was a big part of the reason.
Ronald took too loud a slurp of his coffee, jarring her back into the sunlit breakfast nook. She looked up, startled. He put down the mug.
“I got an idea,” he said.
She plastered on the fake smile. “I think you already made your idea pretty clear.”
“How about tonight we go out to Albert’s Café for dinner? Just the two of us.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m meeting Rachel.”
“No,” he said slowly. “You didn’t tell me.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Is she okay?”
“I think so, yes. She just asked me to come over. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other.”
“It has,” he agreed.
“So I thought I’d stop by after rounds. I hope that’s all right with you.”
“Of course it’s all right with me,” Ronald said with a little too much bravado. He found his newspaper, snapped it open, started reading again. “Have a nice time.”
Cheryl felt the anger start to boil up inside her. Why? Why the hell would Rachel do this to her? If her sister wanted to forgive David, fine and dandy, go for it. But why drag Cheryl in? Why now, when she was rebuilding and pregnant? Rachel had to know what a strain a call like that would be. Why would she do that?
That was the question that really troubled Cheryl. Rachel was a good sister. The best. They were there for each other, always and forever, good times and bad, all that. And even though Cheryl was the older sister by two years, Rachel had—until recently anyway—been the more prudent and overprotective of the two. She knew how hard Cheryl had worked just to get herself out of bed after Matthew’s murder. David, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but Cheryl had cut him from her life, from her thoughts. In order to move on, as far as she was concerned, David had never existed. But Matthew…
Oh, that was another matter.
She would never forget her beautiful little boy. Never. No matter what. Not for a second. That was what she realized. You don’t move past something like that—you learn to live with it. No matter how much pain you are in. You don’t fight that pain. You don’t push it away. You embrace it and let it become a part of you. It’s the only way.