I LEFT WHEN HIS EX CAME BACK WITH HIS SON의 모든 챕터: 챕터 181 - 챕터 190

CLARA The walls in this place are a color I can only describe as apology. They are painted a pale, tired green, the shade someone picks when they want you to feel calm and cannot be bothered to try harder. I have stared at that green for eleven days. I know every crack in it. I know the stain above my bed that looks like a hand, and the way the light from the corridor slides under the door at six every morning when the night nurse starts her rounds. “Good morning, Clara,” she says, because she always says it. “Time for your medication.” She holds out a tiny paper cup with two white pills inside. I took it, smiled, and thanked her, and I put the pills on my tongue. Then I wait until she writes something on her clipboard and turns to the next door, and I slide them into the gap between my gum and my cheek. I have become very good at that. Nobody ever checks twice. I am not sick. I want to be clear about that, if only to myself. They think I am. They have a long word for it, which t

THALIALeo asked about his mother three times before we even left the hospital car park."Is Mommy happy to see me?""Very happy, sweetheart.""Will she be mad if I spill my juice?"My hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Why would she be mad about juice?"He shrugged and looked out of the window, his blanket pulled up to his chin. "I don't know."I did not push. Brandon had made me promise to be patient, and Catherine had pressed a small bag of snacks into my hands at the door with a look that said more than she let herself say. I drove on, and the city slid away behind us.The facility sat at the end of a long gravel drive, hidden behind trees that had been trimmed into very neat shapes. It looked more like a hotel than a hospital, which somehow made it worse. Leo held my hand all the way up the steps, and I felt his fingers tighten when the glass doors slid open.A man in a gray cardigan met us at the front desk. He had kind eyes and a pen that he clicked each time he finished a

CHAPTER 184THALIARoom four-ten was at the very end of the east wing, past a nurses’ station where a young nurse in blue scrubs looked up, spotted the two paper cups in my hands, and winked at me like a fellow conspirator. The corridor smelled of antiseptic and warm toast, and somewhere behind a half-open door a television was playing a cooking show to nobody.“He’s been asking for coffee since breakfast,” she whispered. “Please don’t tell the doctor.”“I won’t.”I laughed quietly and knocked once, then pushed the door open with my elbow.Adrian was sitting up against a pile of pillows in a gray T-shirt, with a small bandage taped inside his elbow and a laptop-shaped gap on the bed table where his computer should have been. He looked paler than usual, and there were faint shadows under his eyes that no amount of cheerfulness could cover. But when he saw me, his whole face lit up the way it always did, easy and unguarded, and something in my chest eased.“You brought real coffee,” he

CHAPTER 186THALIAI don’t remember deciding to run.One second I was standing at the corner of the building with my keys digging into my palm, and the next I was across the grass with gravel spitting under my heels, screaming his name.“Leo!”His head jerked up. The four boys scattered like somebody had thrown a rock into a flock of pigeons, and I hit my knees in front of him and he fell into me so hard it knocked the air out of my lungs. I scooped him up, backpack-less, blanket dragging in the dirt, scraped knees and all. He pushed his face into my neck and didn’t make a sound.That was what broke me. A four-year-old should cry when he’s been hurt. He should howl. Leo just shook, very quietly, like he’d learned that noise made it worse.“I’ve got you,” I said into his hair. “I’ve got you, baby. I’m right here.”The back door banged open. A young woman came tearing across the yard in sandals, cardigan flapping, lanyard slapping against her chest, gasping for breath.“Oh no. Oh, Leo,

CHAPTER 188THALIAThe screen flickered, and a grainy picture of the east yard came up in black and white. For a few seconds nothing happened. A small figure walked to the fence with a blue backpack on his shoulders and a blanket trailing from one hand, sat down in the gravel, and began lining up pebbles.Then four boys came into the frame.The sound was bad, a hiss and crackle under the voices, but it was clear enough. Daniel’s voice came first, light and singsong. Baby. Baby needs his blankie. Then the backpack went up over Leo’s head, the blanket was yanked, and Leo stood and pressed himself against the wire.Nobody in the office breathed.My mom says your mom is crazy. She says she’s locked up in a hospital with all the crazy people.I had heard it once in the yard and hearing it again through a tinny speaker was somehow worse. On the screen, Leo did not move. The backpack hit the gravel, Daniel stamped on it, and the others laughed.Mrs. Pierce had not said a word. Her arms were