Chapter 5: The Green Notebook
"Lily." I kept my voice even.
"Is that another notebook?"
She held it against her chest with both hands.
"This one is different."
"Different how?"
She glanced at the door where Julian had just left.
"This one has what Grandma said on the phone."
Evelyn stood up so fast her handbag slid off her lap.
"Lily, sweetheart, why don't you give that to Grandma so she can—"
"No." Lily moved closer to me on the examination bed, putting my body between herself and Evelyn.
Sandra Reeves had stopped writing.
"Lily," she said quietly, "you don't have to give that to anyone right now.
It's yours.
But would you be willing to show it to me?"
Lily looked at me again.
I put my arm around her shoulders.
"It's your choice," I told her.
"Whatever you want to do."
She thought about it for a moment.
Then she held the green notebook out to Sandra.
Evelyn took one step forward.
"That child has been coached.
Whatever is in that book, someone put those ideas in her head."
"Grandma," Lily said, "I wrote it the same night I heard it.
You were on the phone in the kitchen.
You thought I was asleep."
The color left Evelyn's face in a way I had never seen before.
Not embarrassment.
Something closer to exposure.
Sandra opened the green notebook.
She read the first page.
Then she read it again.
She looked up at Evelyn.
"Mrs.
Hartley, I'm going to ask you to wait in a separate room."
"I have every right to be here with my grandchildren."
"You do not have that right during an active welfare assessment." Sandra's voice stayed completely level.
"A staff member will show you to the family waiting area.
You're welcome to contact an attorney from there."
Evelyn looked at me.
For the first time in two years, there was no smirk.
No satisfaction.
No performance of patience.
"You have no idea what you've started," she said.
"I didn't start anything," I said.
"Toby's fever did."
A nurse appeared at the door.
Evelyn picked up her handbag, smoothed her jacket, and left without another word.
Sandra sat down across from me.
"I'm going to read you what Lily wrote.
I want you to tell me if any of it matches what you've experienced." She looked at Lily.
"Is that okay with you?"
Lily nodded.
Sandra read aloud.
The green notebook contained six entries.
Lily had recorded three phone conversations she had overheard from the top of the stairs — Evelyn's voice, always at night, always after Julian had sent Lily back to bed.
The first call: Evelyn telling someone that the baby was "not thriving" and that I was "refusing proper care." That Julian was "handling it."
The second call: Evelyn saying that if things continued, she would "make sure the right people knew" that I was unfit.
That she had already spoken to someone at the family court.
The third call: Evelyn saying, "The insurance policy is the whole point, Daniel.
If something happens to the baby before the review period ends, Julian gets nothing.
We need the baby healthy enough to survive the next six weeks, then it doesn't matter."
The room was very quiet when Sandra finished reading.
"Insurance policy," I said.
The words felt strange in my mouth.
"What insurance policy?"
Sandra looked at me steadily.
"Do you have life insurance on your children?"
"Julian handles all of that.
I've never—" I stopped.
"He took out a policy on Toby when he was born.
He said it was standard.
He said every parent does it."
"Do you know the terms?"
"No."
Sandra closed the green notebook.
"I need to make a call."
She stepped into the hallway.
Through the window I could see her speaking on her phone, turned away, one hand pressed to her other ear to block the hospital noise.
Toby's IV had been placed.
The nurse said his fever had already dropped a quarter of a degree.
He was sleeping now, his small chest rising and falling, his fingers curled loosely around nothing.
Lily leaned her head against my arm.
"Mom," she said.
"Yes."
"Is Daddy going to be in trouble?"
I looked at my son sleeping.
I looked at my daughter's face, so careful and so tired for seven years old.
"I think so," I said.
She was quiet for a moment.
"I'm not happy about it."
"I know."
"But I'm not sorry I told."
I pulled her closer.
"You saved your brother's life.
You know that, don't you?"
She didn't answer right away.
She just held the teddy bear a little tighter.
Outside in the hallway, Sandra had stopped talking.
May you like
She was listening now, very still, and the expression on her face had shifted into something I could not read from where I sat.
Whatever she was hearing, it was not small.
