“Stop talking,” my mother said.
My father looked at me for the first time since entering the room.
His eyes were wet.
“She told them it belonged to her daughter.”
The pain from my incision seemed to disappear beneath something deeper.
“What else?” I asked.
He hesitated.
Mom took one step toward him.
“Do not do this.”
He flinched, and in that movement I saw their entire marriage—the commands, the silences, the years he had called surrender peace.
“What else did she say?” Daniel asked.
My father’s voice was barely audible.
“She said you had given her permission to sell it.”
“I was unconscious.”
“I know.”
“Did you know she was taking it?”
His face collapsed.
“Yes.”
The answer hurt more than I expected.
He had looked away when my mother closed her fingers around my ring before surgery.
I had noticed it, even through fear and pain.
Some part of me had understood, but I had refused to name it.
“What did she tell you?” I asked.
He glanced at Mom, then back at me.
“She said if you did not make it, Daniel would take the ring anyway.
She said there was no reason for it to sit in a hospital locker when Aiden needed help.”
The nurse outside the room drew in a sharp breath.
Daniel’s hand closed around the rail of my bed until his knuckles whitened.
Aiden stared at our mother.
“You said that?”
Mom’s composure finally cracked.
“Oh, don’t be dramatic.
Everyone was terrified.
Nobody knew whether Emily would wake up.
I was thinking about the child I could still help.”
The child she could still help.
I looked at Aiden.
He looked back at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before.
Not entitlement.
Shame.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
Mom spun toward him.
“You do not need to apologize for having a future.”
“And she didn’t?” he asked.
The question struck harder than a shout.
My mother stared at him.
Aiden took a step away from her.
“You told me the money came from an investment.
You told Dad to say the same thing.
You threw a party while Emily was here?”
“It was not a party.
It was networking.”
“There were thirty people drinking in our house.”
“You needed people to see momentum.”
“You used her ring to fake momentum.”
Mom’s face reddened.
