ADVERTISEMENT
***
For eighteen years, I’d remembered pieces of that hospital night.
Doctor Jefferson walking toward us.
My mother wrapping her arms around me.
“She said you couldn’t face it.”
Someone saying, “He’s gone, Dawn.”
I was sedated, broken, and too weak to hold a pen without help.
After that, everything blurred.
***
Now I looked at Watson. “I need the old folder.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
He followed me to the hall closet while music thumped outside.
“I need the old folder.”
I pulled down the plastic bin and dumped the hospital papers across the bedroom floor.
Watson knelt beside me. “What are we looking for?”
“Proof that Rowan died.”
His hands stopped moving.
I found Riley’s discharge papers, Rex’s feeding chart, condolence cards, and the funeral receipt my mother had handled because I could barely stand.
“What are we looking for?”
But there was no death certificate. My mother had always said the official papers were safe in her fireproof box.
“Watson.”
He looked at the empty space in the folder.
ADVERTISEMENT
