Then toward Sophie.
Sophie did not notice.
She was drawing four people under what appeared to be an enormous purple sun.
The call lasted almost forty minutes.
When it ended, Laurel held the phone in both hands and stared through the window.
“How angry was she?” I asked.
“Very.”
“That means she was scared.”
“I know.”
“Your father?”
“He tried to join the call from the other room and nearly dropped his phone.”
“That sounds promising.”
“She wants to come next month after his cardiologist clears him to travel.”
“And you agreed?”
“I agreed not to lie to her again.”
“That seems like progress.”
Laurel looked down at the phone.
“I thought protecting them meant keeping the hard parts to myself.”
Sophie looked up from her drawing.
“My dad does that.”
I turned.
“What?”
“You say things are fine when they’re not.”
Laurel looked at me.
I looked at Sophie.
“This feels like an ambush.”
Sophie returned to her drawing.
“I’m just saying.”
Laurel smiled.
“Children are terrifying.”
“You have no idea.”
She grew serious again.
“Sometimes protecting people means telling them less.”
“And sometimes,” I said, “it only means they worry without knowing what they’re worried about.”
The following morning, my surgeon told me I could go home the next day.
My incision was healing, my pain was manageable, and outpatient therapy had already been scheduled.
Clare would stay at my house for the first two nights.
More importantly, Sophie could sleep in her own room again.
I should have felt nothing but relief.
Instead, I looked across the hall.
Laurel was reading.
I waited until after lunch to tell her.
She closed the book but kept one finger between the pages.
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“That’s good.”
“It is.”
“You don’t sound happy.”
“I’m happy to go home.”
“To Sophie.”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
“And?”
I looked down.
“I’m not happy to leave.”
She did not finish the question she had been about to ask.
I crossed the hall and took the chair beside her bed.
“I can come back.”
“You’ll have therapy, work, your daughter, your own life.”
“You keep saying that as if this week happened outside my life.”
Laurel looked toward the corridor.
“People say things in hospitals they don’t mean once they go home.”
“What things?”
“That they’ll visit. That they’ll call. That they’ll stay in touch.”
“Have people said that to you before?”
“My grandmother was in the hospital for three months when I was twenty-two. The first week, everybody came. By the last month, it was mostly my mother and me.”