CHAPTER 8

We don’t go out the front.

Naomi doesn’t even need to say it. One look at her face and Elias is already on his feet, one hand under my elbow, steering me through the kitchen of the tea house past a startled cook and a stack of clean saucers. The back door opens onto an alley that smells of wet cardboard and fried onions.

“Wait,” I whisper.

I can’t help it. Through the thin wall, I hear a voice carry from the front room.

It is smooth. Patient. Reasonable.

“I’m only here as a worried father, Ms. Park. My daughter is in a fragile state. I’d simply like to know that she’s safe.”

My father.

Twenty-eight years of that voice. It could talk a board into silence and a nurse into tears, and it never rose above a murmur. I used to think calm was the same thing as strength. Standing in a greasy alley with my hand pressed against my stomach, I finally understand the difference. Strength doesn’t need to freeze a daughter’s bank accounts at midnight and call it concern.

“Serena.” Elias’s hand tightens on my arm. “Now.”

I let him pull me away.

The car is parked two streets over. I don’t breathe properly until the tea house shrinks in the rear window. Elias drives with both hands on the wheel, jaw set, watching every mirror.

“How did he find out?” My voice comes out raw. “Naomi said nobody knew. She said it was sealed.”

“I don’t know.”

“Somebody told him. Somebody who knows where I was going.” I turn to face him. “You and Naomi are the only people who knew.”

“And you think it was one of us?”

“No.” The word leaves me instantly. “No. But somebody did, Elias.”

He doesn’t answer. His knuckles are pale against the wheel.

My phone buzzes against my leg.

I look down. A text from an unknown number.

Daddy’s looking everywhere for you, sis. Come home before he gets angry. XO

Bianca.

My vision narrows to a point. I turn the screen face down on my thigh before I can throw it out the window.

“Don’t take me back to the apartment,” I say.

“Serena…”

“Take me to a lab.”

He glances at me sharply. “What?”

“The tonic.” I take the plastic bag out of my purse, holding the amber bottle like it might go off in my hands. “I can’t wait for the hospital, and I can’t take it anywhere my father has a name. I need someone who doesn’t know who I am. Someone who has never heard the word, Vance.”

Elias is quiet for a long moment. Then he exhales slowly.

“There’s someone,” he says. “Priya Nair. We trained together. She runs a private toxicology lab across the river. No hospital contracts, no board. Strictly independent.”

“Can she keep it quiet?”

“She can keep a corpse quiet. It’s practically her job.”

It is, absurdly, the first thing that has made me laugh all day, even if it comes out half a hiccup.

Priya’s lab is a squat brick building wedged between a tire shop and a shuttered bakery, cold and white and humming inside. Priya herself is small and brisk, with silver glasses and a sleeve of bright tattoos, and she takes the bag without asking a single question.

“I’ll need a name for the intake form,” she says.

I hesitate. My hand trembles over the clipboard.

“Anna Lane,” I say finally.

It is the closest thing I have to my grandmother’s name, without writing it down. Elias doesn’t comment. He just watches me print it in careful block letters.

“And the prescribing physician?” Priya asks. “If there is one.”

I point to the handwritten label. My finger is shaking.

“Dr. Roland Pierce.”

Priya writes it down.

I hear the room go quiet.

It takes me a second to realize why. Beside me, Elias has stopped moving. All the color has drained from his face, leaving him gray under the fluorescent lights, as if someone has unplugged him.

“Elias?”

“Sorry.” He blinks. “Just tired.”

“You went white.”

“I said I’m tired, Serena.” It comes out sharper than he means it to. He sees my expression and softens at once. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep. Do you know him? Pierce?”

“He’s been our family doctor since I was twelve.”

The words sit in my mouth like stones.

Dr. Pierce, with his kind gray eyes and his peppermints for every child who sat on the paper-covered table. Dr. Pierce, who came to the mansion when I had my tonsils out and stayed for tea. Dr. Pierce, who held my hand, three times, in three different exam rooms, while a nurse stood by with a clipboard, and told me gently, so gently, that I should try not to blame myself.

These things happen, Serena. You’re young. You’ll have another chance.

I press my palm over my mouth.

He told me that. He sat across from me and looked me in the eyes and said it. And all the while, the bottle in my bag had his name on it.

“Serena.” Elias’s voice is low. His hand finds my elbow. “Look at me. We don’t know anything yet. This could be nothing. A vitamin tonic. A mistake.”

“Do you believe that?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it.

“No,” he says quietly.

Priya clears her throat. She is holding the bag up to the light, frowning at the cloudy liquid inside. “I can have preliminary results in forty-eight hours. If it’s what I think you’re worried about, I’d say expect a call sooner.”

“What do you mean, what I’m worried about?”

She looks at me over her glasses. For a moment her expression is almost kind.

“People don’t send me a bottle under a fake name because they’re curious about the flavor,” she says.

I have no answer for that.

Back in the car, the engine ticks as it cools. Elias doesn’t start it. Neither of us speaks. Outside, a bus rumbles past and the light shifts across the dashboard in long, tired stripes.

“I need to tell you something,” Elias says at last. “The hospital in Texas. It’s real, and it starts in a week. I was going to wait until you were stronger, but…”

“You’re moving.”

“I am.” He turns to me. “And I don’t want you here. Not with your father looking for you, and Bianca texting you, and whoever else knows where you are. I want you to come with me. Just until you’re back on your feet.”

“Elias…”

“You don’t have to answer today.” His voice is very gentle. “I just want it to be on the table.”

I look down at my hands. The same hands that have steadied scalpels and held newborns and signed my own divorce. They look very small right now.

“I don’t know how to run,” I whisper. “I’ve never run from anything.”

“This isn’t running. It’s choosing where to stand.”

Before I can answer, my phone buzzes again. This time it’s my mother.

I want to ignore it. I read it anyway.

Darling, Dr. Pierce is so worried about you after what happened at court. He’ll stop by tomorrow to check on you. Be kind to him. He’s family.

The world goes very still.

I read it again. Then again, slower, my lips moving.

I never told her where I was staying.

I never told anyone.

“Elias,” I breathe. “She knows where I am.”