“What did you hear?”
“A scream.”
She swallowed.
“Just one. Really sharp.”
“And you didn’t go in?”
“I started to.”
Her face crumpled.
“Thomas came out and said Mason had slipped when he was lifting him. He said he caught him.”
I looked through the glass toward the treatment area.
Mason’s blanket was visible at the end of a hallway.
Blue.
The same blue blanket I had wrapped around him when I carried him out of the apartment.
“What happened after that?” I asked.
“Thomas dressed him.”
“Then told me not to undress him.”
Ellie covered her face.
That was the moment I understood she had not walked into St. Vincent’s already knowing exactly what Thomas had done.
She had walked in carrying pieces.
The scream.
The explanation about the tub.
The covered bruise she had never been shown.
My phone call.
Thomas’s panic.
Now the pieces were touching.
