The Fate Intercessor

Chapter 22: Visiting Hours

Colleen Doyle-Ramirez arrived at 9:40 the next morning, and I knew it before anyone told me.

I was propped up against the pillows with a cup of ice chips going to water in my lap when Maggie went rigid in the back of my head. It was the kind of stillness animals do when they hear a car door in the driveway. Nobody had said a word. The hallway outside was the same as always, a squeaking cart, the soft electronic chimes, a nurse laughing at something down by the station.

She’s here, Maggie said.

“How do you know?”

I know the sound of her walking. A pause. She’s always walked on her heels.

I listened. Under the cart and the chimes, there it was, a steady, deliberate click, coming down the corridor and slowing as it neared Room 412. It stopped just outside the door.

For a long time nothing happened.

Then a soft knock. Two taps, and a wait. Then Dani’s voice, low and apologetic, saying something I couldn’t catch. And then Colleen’s, close enough through the wood that I could hear her swallow.

“I’m not going to come in. I just wanted her to know I’m here.”

Tell her to go.

“Maggie.”

Tell her. Say I’m resting. Say I don’t feel well.

“You don’t feel well because you’re dying. It isn’t a reason.”

Cal.

It wasn’t a command this time. It was a plea, and it was so thin, so naked, that it went through me like cold water. I’d been braced for a fight. I hadn’t been braced for that.

I set the cup on the tray and said, loudly enough to carry, “Dani. Could you let her stay in the hallway?”

A pause. “Margaret?”

“She doesn’t have to come in. She can sit out there. I won’t send her away.”

You traitor.

“I’m not letting her in,” I said, quietly, to the back of my head. “I’m just not locking the door.”

***

It was a long morning.

Dr. Reyes came at ten, a tall, soft-spoken man with a clipboard he didn’t need to look at. He sat on the edge of the visitor’s chair and explained things in a voice built for it. The pain was going to get harder. The pump would go up. There were a few conversations he’d recommend having sooner rather than later. He didn’t say the number, and he didn’t need to. When he stood up, he rested his hand briefly on my shoulder, and Maggie bristled and then, without meaning to, let it stay.

At eleven, Dani brought a sandwich I didn’t touch. She lingered at the door.

“She’s still out there,” she said. “She hasn’t moved. I told her there’s a family lounge with a coffee machine.”

“What did she say?”

“That she’s fine where she is.” Dani almost smiled. “She brought a book. It’s upside down.”

She does that, Maggie said, and her voice caught in a way she clearly hadn’t intended. When she’s nervous. She holds a book like it’s a shield and doesn’t read a word.

I didn’t say anything. I let it be quiet.

By noon the hall outside had gone to a low murmur of voices and lunch trays. Under it, I could still hear the faint creak of a chair, every few minutes, as someone shifted her weight. It was the sound of a person who’d decided to wait as long as it took.

“She’s going to be there all day,” I said.

Let her.

“You’ve got four days. Maybe three, now.”

I don’t need you to count for me.

“I’m not counting for you. I’m saying she’s out there, and you’re in here, and the wall between you is about two inches of drywall.” I shifted against the pillow. “That’s a lot thinner than fourteen years.”

It isn’t the wall, Cal.

“Then what is it?”

For a minute I thought she’d shut me out again. Then, in the smallest voice I’d heard from her yet:

If she walks in, I have to see her face.

I understood that more than I wanted to. I’d had a version of it with a wife I couldn’t picture. A woman whose name I couldn’t hold and whose face wouldn’t come, and I’d have given nearly anything for one clear look. Maggie had the opposite problem. She could see it too well.

“What does she look like?”

I don’t know. It came out almost angry. That’s the point. Fourteen years. The last time she was thirty-one. I don’t know what she looks like now. I don’t know how she holds her mouth. If she’s gray, if she’s put on weight, if she’s got lines. I keep a picture in my head, and it’s a girl in a green dress, and she’s not that anymore. A shuddering breath. If I look at her, I’ll lose the girl.

I closed my eyes.

That’s the whole of it, Maggie said. I’d rather have the girl.

***

The afternoon dragged. Around three I dozed. Pain had a way of pulling me under, and when I came up, the light in the window had shifted, and a shape had appeared in the narrow glass pane of the door.

Someone was standing just outside.

I couldn’t see more than a shoulder, a curve of dark hair going gray at the temple, one hand lifted as if to knock and then pressed flat against the wood instead. She wasn’t doing anything. She was just standing there, close enough to touch.

Don’t, Maggie said. Don’t say a word.

I didn’t. I lay still and watched the hand on the door.

On the other side of the wood, in a voice so low I almost missed it, Colleen spoke.

“I read your letters, you know.”

Maggie stopped breathing. I felt it. Every muscle in the borrowed body locked.

“The old ones. The ones you sent back.” A shaky laugh. “Not at the time. I was angry at the time. But Dad’s lawyer kept them in a file when he cleaned out the house, and last spring I found them in a box. All fourteen.” The hand moved on the glass, a slow slide. “I opened them one at a time, one a night. It took two weeks.”

Cal, Maggie said. Make her stop.

“I don’t remember what you said,” Colleen went on. “That’s the strange part. I’ve been trying for years. I remember the room, and the dress, and the fact that Dad had been gone for a while. I remember I slammed the door so hard a picture fell down. But the words...”

I felt something cold slide down the back of my neck.

“I thought you’d remember. I thought that was why you never wrote back.” A pause, very long. “But your letters didn’t mention it. And I started to wonder whether you’d ever known what you did.”

The wood creaked as she leaned her forehead against it.

“Mom, I’m not here to fight. I only need to know one thing. Whatever happened, did you ever once think I might have been wrong?”