“She did?”
“No,” Diane said quietly. “Lauren, the nurse, called first. Then Emily called the next morning. She sounded… I don’t even know how to describe it.”
“Where is she?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“She must have said something.”
“She said she was alive. She said the girls were alive. She said not to come unless I could come for her, not for you.”
Mark gripped the roof of his car.
“What does that mean?”
“It means exactly what it sounds like.”
“Mom—”
“I went to the hospital, Mark. I saw her.”
He stopped breathing for a second.
“You saw her and didn’t call me?”
“I had already called you. Do you remember? Three times. Your phone was off.”
His jaw tightened.
“I was dealing with something.”
“No,” Diane said, voice trembling now. “Emily was dealing with something. She was lying in a hospital bed, pale as paper, with staples across her stomach and three tiny babies in incubators. She kept asking the nurses whether Hope’s breathing had improved. She was trying not to fall apart because there was no one there to catch her.”
