Chapter 3

Percival's mother reached the hospital before dawn.

By the time she came rushing in, I had already finished the paperwork and was sitting alone on the bench, sorting through Nina's things.

A little cup, a hair clip, an unfinished workbook, and a crumpled brochure for a trip to the coast.

Nina had folded that flyer so many times the corners had gone soft.

She had always wanted to see the ocean.

Percival had promised her he'd take her once the company went public.

Nina held on to that promise more firmly than to any of her doctor's orders.

Every time a treatment left her hurting, she'd count on her fingers and ask me how much longer until Daddy's company went public.

I always told her, soon.

Later the company really did go public.

And she died that very day.

"Where's my Nina?"

Her grandmother grabbed my shoulder, sobbing so hard she could barely stand.

I handed Nina's things to her.

The moment she saw the cup, her crying swelled, and she turned and slapped Percival hard across the face.

"Why didn't you come back? That was your own daughter!"

Percival didn't dodge.

He just stood there, one side of his face reddening fast.

His mother lifted her hand again, then stopped when she saw the divorce papers on the floor.

She picked them up, glanced at them, and jerked her head toward me.

"Kirsten, what is this?"

"Divorce papers."

"Nina's just gone, and now you're asking Percival for a divorce?"

Her grief hardened at once into something guarded.

"The two of you only have each other now. This is exactly when you have to hold the family together."

That line again.

As if the moment I refused to keep enduring, I'd be the one tearing the family apart.

"This family fell apart a long time ago."

"Nonsense!" Her grandmother cut me off, eyes red. "All these years Percival worked himself to the bone to make money, and wasn't it all for you and Nina? The house you live in, the money for the child's treatment, which of it didn't come from him?"

I looked at Percival.

His eyes were lowered. He didn't argue.

Maybe in his own mind he felt the same, that money had already fulfilled every duty of a husband and a father for him.

"Nina's first hospital stay, I was the only one with her, for twenty-one days."

"The first time she was rushed into the emergency room, he was out of town at a funding meeting."

"The first full sentence she learned to write was 'When is Daddy coming home.'"

"For the past three years, every test result, every hospital stay, every hard night, I was the one beside her. Beyond paying, what did Percival ever do?"

His mother had nothing to say.

Percival finally raised his head.

"If I didn't earn the money, what would you have paid for Nina's treatment with?"

His voice was shaking, as if he were trying to convince me, and himself too.

"And what could I have done if I'd come back? I'm not a doctor. I couldn't have saved her!"

I looked at him for a long time.

"She never asked you to save her."

"She only wanted to look at her father's face before she died."

Every last bit of color drained from Percival's face.