Chapter 7: Emily's Flat Voice
Emily was still in the hospital.
She hadn't left since the children were admitted, which I had taken as grief and guilt and the ordinary paralysis of a mother watching her children suffer.
I found her in the corridor outside Sophie's room, sitting in a plastic chair with a paper cup of cold coffee, staring at the floor.
I sat down beside her.
She didn't look up.
"Emily," I said.
"I need to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth."
"I'm very tired, Margaret."
"I know.
So am I." I waited until she looked at me.
"Where were you the night before my birthday?"
Something moved behind her eyes.
Quick.
Gone.
"Home," she said.
"With the kids."
"Nathan was home too?"
"He went out.
He said he had a work thing." She looked back at the floor.
"He was gone for about three hours."
"Did you know what was in the chocolates before you gave them to Sophie and Ben?"
The paper cup crumpled slightly in her hand.
"No," she said.
"Emily."
"I said no."
"Then why didn't you eat any?
You told me you don't like dark chocolate.
But I've seen you eat dark chocolate at Christmas for fifteen years."
The cup crumpled further.
Coffee dripped onto the floor between her feet.
She said nothing for a long time.
Then: "He told me they were for you.
He said they were a special gift and I shouldn't touch them.
He didn't tell me why." Her voice was very low.
"I thought maybe he'd put something in them to make you sick.
Something that would — I don't know.
Make you seem confused.
He'd been talking for months about getting you declared incompetent." She finally looked at me.
Her eyes were dry.
"I didn't think he meant to kjll you.
I swear to you I didn't know that."
"But you knew something was wrong."
"Yes."
"And you let your children eat them."
Her face collapsed.
Not performance — the real thing, the kind of collapse that comes when a person finally stops holding something up.
"I didn't think they'd touch them," she whispered.
"The box was in the kitchen cabinet.
I put it up high.
I don't know how Ben —" She pressed her hand over her mouth.
"I don't know how he found it."
"Ben is eight years old and he loves chocolate," I said.
"That's how he found it."
She was crying now, silently, her shoulders shaking.
I felt many things sitting in that chair.
Anger.
Pity.
Exhaustion.
Something that was not quite forgiveness and not quite its opposite.
"You need to tell the detectives everything you just told me," I said.
"All of it.
Tonight."
"They'll charge me."
"Possibly.
That's not my decision." I stood up.
"But Emily — those are my grandchildren in that room.
And they are your children.
And if there is any part of you that wants to do right by them, you will walk down that corridor right now and you will tell Detective Marsh everything you know."
Emily sat very still.
Then she stood up.
She dropped the cup in the trash can beside the chair.
She smoothed her shirt with both hands.
She walked down the corridor without looking back at me.
I watched her go.
Then I pushed open Sophie's door and sat beside my granddaughter's bed and held her hand until she stirred and opened her eyes and said, "Grandma, you're squishing my fingers."
May you like
"Sorry, sweetheart," I said.
"Sorry."
