I went to the small desk in the corner of the living room. I went through the drawers as fast as I could without making noise, my hands shaking just enough to make the papers rattle.
Insurance folder. I found it in the second drawer, a clear plastic folder stuffed with papers. I opened it on the desk and went through it with my phone’s flashlight. Car insurance. Homeowners policy. Something from her employer dated eighteen months ago. I kept going.
There—a health insurance card with Lily's name on it. I turned it over. A customer service number on the back, a policy number, and a pediatrician listed that I didn't recognize.
I stared at it.
It was ten-fifteen. I didn't know if the number was a twenty-four-hour line or an office that wouldn't open until nine. I didn't know if this was even how it worked—if you called the insurance company or the doctor or just went straight to the ER and figured the rest out later. I typed the pediatrician's name into my phone. Closed the browser. Opened it again. Typed infever in child what to doand read three lines before I stopped.
This was stupid. This was exactly the kind of thing you didn’t Google at ten o'clock at night with a sick kid upstairs.
She needed someone who knew what they were doing. Someone who could tell me in thirty seconds whether this was an ER at midnight or Tylenol and a cool cloth and a check-up in the morning. Someone who wouldn’t need me to explain who I was or what I was doing here.
I knew one person in this town.
I closed the browser and went back to the desk. The address book had been in the second drawer, under the insurance folder. Small, green—the kind nobody kept anymore. I found the M’s and ran my finger down the page, and there it was. Cassie’s neat handwriting.
Maddie Clarke.
I sat there for a second, looking at the ink. Then I picked up my phone.
Chapter Twenty
Madison
"The pinot noir thing," Tom said, his voice as smooth as the wine in his hand. "Last weekend of the month. Two nights at the vineyard, a private tasting, and the gala dinner on Saturday." He shifted on the leather sofa, leaning into my space just enough to be inviting. "Don’t check the board, Madison. Don’t consult the gods of the OR. Just say yes."
I looked at him over the rim of my glass. The wine was expensive—the kind of vintage that left a complex, earthy trail on the tongue, worlds away from the rot-gut prosecco I used to buy in brown paper bags. Tom lived in a world of fine vintages and scheduled joys.
"Can I at least look at my calendar?" I asked.
"You always say that."
"Because I always need to look at my calendar, Tom. People have a habit of staying in the hospital longer than they planned."
He smiled, a slow, easy expression that didn't hold a hint of resentment. He reached out and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear, his thumb grazing my temple. "One weekend. The world will keep spinning if Dr. Clarke takes forty-eight hours off."
He let it go after that, which was Tom. He didn't push; he just waited for you to realize he was right.
On the television, a man in a tactical vest was sweating over a tangle of wires, trying to defuse something that the plot wouldn't allow him to finish until the final seconds. Tom had put it on an hour ago as background noise, a low-stakes distraction we weren't really watching.
That was the primary draw of Tom’s apartment—it didn't require anything from me. It was a space designed for comfort, all neutral tones, high-end finishes, and a climate-control system that hummed so quietly you forgot it was there. There were no drafts here. No stuffed dish towels in the window frames to keep out the Colorado winter.
I’d brought a bag this time, a weekend’s worth of clothes squeezed into a duffel. I’d decided to stay here through Sunday, unable to face another night like Tuesday, when I’d stared at my own ceiling until two in the morning, listening to the silence of my apartment turn into an interrogation. I needed the sleep, but more than that, I needed the presence of another person to drown out my own head.
I tucked my feet under me, sinking into the oversized cushions. After a while, Tom reached over and put his hand on my ankle—easy and warm, a simple gesture of proximity that didn't ask for a thing. I leaned my head onto his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his detergent and the expensive soap he used.
The movie went on. The thing on the screen got defused or it didn’t; it didn’t matter either way. The apartment was quiet except for the cinematic explosions, and outside, the rain was blurring the streetlights into orange smears against the glass. I was almost there—that elusive edge of actually switching off—when my phone buzzed on the cushion beside me.
I looked down. It was marked as an unknown number, but as the digits scrolled across the screen, the air left my lungs.
I hadn’t seen that sequence in twelve years. I’d deleted the contact a lifetime ago in Baltimore, but my brain had never stopped holding onto it. It was his number. The one I used to call when the world felt too big.
"Hello?"
"Hey—sorry. It's, uh—" A long, ragged pause followed, the kind that sounded like someone catching their breath after a fall. "It's Jack. Henley. Sorry to call this late, Maddie."
The sound of my name in his voice, even through the digital haze of a cell signal, felt like a cold hand on my neck. I sat up, the warmth of Tom’s shoulder suddenly feeling a thousand miles away.