His shoulders lowered.
“I did not harm her,” he said.
Lorenzo’s voice became almost gentle. “Then tell me who changed the sample.”
“I don’t know.”
“But you know something.”
Vincent looked older than he had that morning.
“Mrs. Pellegrini came to me four days before the accident,” he said. “She gave me instructions. She said that if Sophia ever became ill, I was to prevent anyone from testing her blood outside the approved hospital network.”
Dr. Patel stared at him. “Why would you obey an instruction like that?”
“Because she told me it would keep Sophia alive.”
Lorenzo’s anger rose, but grief held it in check.
“You knew Juliana expected this.”
“I knew she feared it.”
“And you said nothing.”
“She made me swear.”
“She is dead.”
Vincent flinched.
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“My daughter has endured months of treatment. Tell me now whether she has leukemia.”
“I believed she did.”
“Belief is not an answer.”
Dr. Patel intervened.
“The current sample still shows serious abnormalities. Sophia is ill. But the precise nature of that illness may need to be reassessed immediately.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Small footsteps.
We turned.
Sophia stood in the doorway.
The oncology nurse was behind her, apologizing breathlessly. “She woke and insisted on coming down. I tried to stop her.”
Sophia wore a white cardigan over her pajamas. One hand held the banister. The other clutched the butterfly book against her chest.
Lorenzo crossed the room.
“Sophia, you should be in bed.”
She did not retreat.
Instead, she looked at Vincent.
His face crumpled.
Sophia opened the butterfly book and removed a folded sheet of paper from inside the back cover.
She held it out to her father.
Lorenzo took it carefully.
The paper was covered in a child’s uncertain handwriting. Most of the words were copied rather than freely written, their letters uneven and large.
At the top was a date from six months before Sophia’s diagnosis.
Beneath it was a sentence.
MAMA SAID WHEN I GET SICK, DO NOT LET THEM TAKE ME TO SAINT AGNES.
Dr. Patel stepped forward.
“Saint Agnes was the hospital that made the original diagnosis.”
Lorenzo read the sentence again.
Then he noticed something written at the bottom of the page in Juliana’s handwriting.
He read it aloud.
“If I cannot protect her, find Emma Foster. She knows how to recognize the man who calls himself Daniel.”
My breath stopped.
Sophia turned toward me.
Her lips parted.
This time, her voice was faint but unmistakable.
“He came here.”
No one spoke.
I knelt in front of her.
“Daniel came to this house?”
She nodded.
“When?”
Sophia looked toward Vincent.
But she did not point at him.
She pointed beyond him, toward the framed photograph of Juliana and Sophia beneath the flowering trees.
Then she said the words that changed everything we thought we knew about Juliana’s final day.
“Mommy left with him.”