“I know that now.”
My heart began pounding. “Now?”
“I suspected for years. But suspicion is a weak thing when everyone else insists it is grief.”
“Everyone else?”
He breathed out. “Your mother. And Dr. Ellis.”
The name pulled me backward.
Dr. Ellis had been my neurologist after the accident. The man who told my family stress could worsen my recovery. The man who advised limiting emotional shocks. The man my mother trusted completely because he spoke gently and wore expensive glasses.
“What does he have to do with this?”
“He was the one who told us you had asked not to see Hannah.”
My blood went cold.
“I never said that.”
“I believe you.”
The words did not comfort me. They came too late.
“Why are you telling me now?” I asked.
“Because I saw Lucas today,” my father said, and his voice broke on the name. “And he has your dimple.”
I closed my eyes.
In the background, I heard my mother say something muffled.
My father lowered his voice. “Jake, there is something else. Something I should have given you years ago.”
“What?”
“A copy of a hospital visitor log.”
I sat up slowly. “From after the accident?”
“Yes.”
“Hannah said she came.”
“She did.”
My throat tightened.
“How many times?”
“Four.”
Four.
Not one. Not a misunderstanding. Four times.
“She came the morning you woke up,” my father continued. “Your mother told security she was not to be admitted.”
I could barely hear him over the sound of my own heartbeat.
“And you let that happen?”
“I was told you had requested it.”
“You believed that?”
“I believed what I wanted to believe,” he said quietly. “Because the alternative meant admitting your mother had done something unforgivable while you were lying in a hospital bed.”
The word unforgivable hung between us.
I did not know if it was true.
I only knew I had no room for forgiveness yet.
“Send me the log,” I said.
“I will.”