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The truck drove steadily across town for almost twenty minutes, eventually pulling into the parking lot of Bellhaven Regional Hospital.
I sat frozen in my own car for a moment, watching Sienna climb out of the passenger side and walk toward the entrance beside the driver, and that’s when I finally got a clear look at exactly who’d been picking her up all week.
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Roy. My ex-husband’s older brother.
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I hadn’t seen Roy in almost two years, not since the last strained holiday gathering before Gordon and I finalized our divorce completely. I parked quickly and followed them inside, my mind racing through a dozen different explanations, none of them landing anywhere close to what I actually found once I reached the fourth floor.
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Sienna was sitting beside a hospital bed when I finally pushed through the door of room 412, holding the hand of a man considerably thinner and grayer than the version of my ex-husband I remembered from our last real conversation almost a year earlier.
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Gordon looked up first, his expression shifting rapidly from confusion into something closer to resigned understanding.
“Paige,” he said quietly.
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Sienna’s face went through several stages at once — surprise, then fear, then something close to relief, like some part of her had been waiting to be caught for days now.
“Mom,” she said. “I can explain.”
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“I’d genuinely like you to,” I said, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “Starting with why you’ve been skipping an entire week of school to visit your father in a hospital I didn’t even know he was in.”
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Gordon shifted slightly against his pillows. “This isn’t Sienna’s fault, Paige. I asked Roy to bring her. I should have called you myself, honestly. I kept putting it off.”
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“Putting off telling me you’re in the hospital,” I said, “or putting off telling me our daughter’s been secretly visiting you all week instead of going to class?”
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“Both,” Gordon admitted. “I have liver failure, Paige. It’s been building for a long time, longer than I ever told either of you. The damage from the years I was drinking finally caught up completely. The doctors gave me a few months, maybe less.”
