Chapter 4: Friday
We had four days.
Elliot couldn’t walk. He could barely sit up without his blood pressure dropping. But he could think, and it turned out that the man who’d built a rocket company from a rented garage in Hartford could plan like nobody I’d ever met.
During the day, he lay still with his eyes closed while the drip ran into a bag I’d hung under the bed instead of into his arm. Dr. Patel had shown me how. At night, when the snoring started next door, we worked. Sitting up for five minutes, then ten. Squeezing a rubber ball. Swallowing water from a spoon. Saying words until his voice stopped cracking.
On the second night he asked for my phone. He typed a number from memory with one shaking finger.
“Marcus Hale,” he said. “My lawyer. Vivian fired him the week after the crash. He’ll pick up.”
Marcus picked up. He was very quiet for a long time while Elliot talked. Then he said, in a thick voice, “Give me until Friday.”
On the third night, Elliot recorded a video on my phone. He looked into the camera and said his name, the date, and that he was awake, of sound mind, and being held under sedation he had not consented to. Then he said: “Everything Nora Ashford does is with my permission.”
Nora Ashford. It was the first time anyone had called me that.
Friday morning, Vivian sent a maid to tell me to change out of my scrubs. “Something presentable.” I put on the only nice things I had, a black cardigan and a cream blouse from Target, and I walked down to the library at ten o’clock.
They were all there. Vivian at the head of the long table. The Halvorsen lawyer, a man with a silver tie and a gold pen. Vivian’s lawyer. Dr. Lyle by the window, in his tweed jacket, not looking at me.
And Gail and Kelsey, in matching designer sunglasses pushed up on their heads, sitting on the leather sofa like it was a show.
“Payday,” Kelsey said when she saw me, and wiggled her fingers. “How’s your vegetable, Nora? Enjoy him while he lasts.”
Gail laughed. “She’s going to sign, Vivian. She knows what’s good for her. Right, honey? Think of Theo.”
The document was open on the table, flagged with little yellow tabs. Page thirty-one. A gold pen lay across it.
I sat down. I picked up the pen. I could feel all of them watching me.
I thought about my father at our kitchen table, signing where the man from the bank pointed.
I put the pen down.
“No,” I said.
The room went silent. The Halvorsen lawyer looked at Vivian. Vivian didn’t take her eyes off me.
“Dr. Lyle,” she said calmly. “Would you say Mrs. Ashford seems stable to you?”
Dr. Lyle cleared his throat. “She does seem… very agitated.”
“I thought so.” Vivian folded her hands. “Here’s what happens now, Nora. Dr. Lyle certifies that you’re unstable. The marriage is annulled for fraud. You go back to your apartment over the nail salon. Gail tells family court you’ve had a breakdown. And your brother goes into the system, because, frankly, Gail doesn’t want him either.”
Gail shrugged. She didn’t even argue.
My hands were shaking under the table. But I didn’t pick up the pen.
“You can do all of that,” I said. “I’m still not signing.”
Vivian sighed and reached for her phone.
Behind her, the library door opened.
Dr. Patel came in first, pushing a wheelchair. Behind her came Marcus Hale with a briefcase, and behind him, two uniformed officers from the Greenwich police.
In the wheelchair, in a navy sweater, thin and pale and very much awake, sat Elliot Ashford.
Kelsey dropped her phone. Vivian’s face went the color of paper.
Elliot looked at the document on the table. Then at the gold pen. Then at his stepmother.
“She doesn’t need to sign anything,” he said. “I’m right here.”
