A nurse came out while we waited. Lucy was stable. Sedated. Moving to a monitored room overnight. Better vitals. Still no ID on what she’d swallowed.
I took Grace’s call in the hallway so Michael could stay with Lucy.
“Backyard camera, six-forty,” Grace said. “That’s the party.”
Thirty minutes of my daughter’s birthday, scrubbed down to a timeline. Balloons. Cake. My mother laughing at nothing. Vanessa weaving through guests with a plate of appetizers, smiling at everyone.
Then, at 7:52 p.m. — eleven minutes after I remembered the ambulance pulling out of my driveway — a shape stepped through the side gate.
Vanessa.
She wasn’t supposed to be there. I’d assumed she’d followed us to the hospital.
She walked straight to the folding table. No glancing around. No hesitation. She moved like she was retracing her own footprints in the dark.
She picked up the glass lemonade dispenser with both hands.
