of your life attached to them in court.”
I looked at the lake through the window.
A boat moved slowly across the water, leaving a clean white line behind it.
“No,” I said. “I do not want a courtroom. I want my house. I want my time. I want my head back.”
“Then that is the win,” Soraya said.
Her letter went out that afternoon.
Keaton’s lawyer never replied.
My parents did not contact me directly for six weeks.
When my father finally did, he called the cardiac unit at 1:00 in the morning and told the clerk he was having chest pain and needed to speak to his daughter before going to the emergency room.
The clerk found me hanging medication in Room 7.
“Arden, your father is on the phone. He says it is his heart.”
For one second, I was a daughter again.
Then I was
a nurse.
