The hardest part to grasp is whether she believed that Miranda had told her, in no simple terms, that everything she had hoped wasn’t true, was. Her mental illness is hereditary. From a man who did something so vile it ruined three generations of lives with one horrible act.
Cline has the truck running, and I’m still looking through her phone as I climb into the passenger seat, buckling myself in while I try to find the number I’m searching for. He answers on the second ring. Patrick Byrd must not be used to getting phone calls at 3 a.m. from his daughter’s phone.
He’ll be even more surprised with the screenshots of the conversation I’m sending him between his daughter and his wife.
“They pumped her stomach. I think we got to her just in time.” September is holding a cup of coffee in one hand, and her forehead is resting in the other. Audrey is in ICU, and we’re all in some sort of limbo because we are not next of kin, so there’s no entry. “We won’t get to see her. You know that, right?”
I shake my head. That can’t be true. I don’t think I can bear to leave this state without seeing her and making sure she’s okay.
“It’s true. Once they get her settled and leveled out, she’ll be in here for a couple days. Then they’ll put her on a seventy-two hour hold. We won’t be allowed to see her.” She says it quietly like we just need to accept it, come to terms with it early, so that none of us are surprised when it happens and we’re dismissed.
We wait until the sun begins to rise, and just as my eyes drift close and my head nods forward, I hear a man asking for Audrey. He’s demanding to see her. My attention is immediately on the tall, thin man with light colored hair and wire-rimmed glasses standing at the desk. Given the amount of time it’s taken him to get here, Audrey’s dad must have flown in from Tennessee.
He’s handed some paperwork, and he speaks sharply to the nurse behind the kiosk before turning and slumping into a chair to fill out the insurance paperwork none of us had the information for. Cline is the first to stand up and go to sit by his side. The look of relief that crosses Patrick Byrd’s face when he sees his neighbor causes my chest to hurt. When my friend points over to me, and the older man’s gaze lands on my face, I am struck still until he nods his head and waves me over.
“Mr. Byrd, I’m Elliot Clark. It’s nice to meet you.” I extend my hand and he takes it, squeezing once before letting go.
“I wish it were under different circumstances.” He glances down at the paperwork in his lap. “You’re the one who sent me the messages from Miranda?”
“Yes, sir. I would apologize, but—“
“Nothing to apologize about. If I had known it was going on, I would have put an end to it much sooner. As it is, she’s packing her things and moving out of my house right now, with the instructions to be gone before I bring my daughter back home.” He’s furiously writing on the paperwork, focused so that he can get it over with as fast as he can. He pauses momentarily and looks over his shoulder at Cline. “How did she find out that she’s not mine? I never told her.”
“That’s a good question. She just told me the answer yesterday, actually. I’m not supposed to know about the last time this happened … with the car …” They are staring at one another in silent understanding. “That day she came home from school early to ask you about her mom because she’d been feeling depressed, I guess. But when she walked in, she heard Miranda talking to you about having kids, and you were arguing about how you could never have kids, and then Miranda said that Audrey wasn’t your daughter anyway, so what did it even matter.”
The silence lasts for much too long, making me feel uncomfortable, like I’m intruding on an intimate moment between the two of them that I shouldn’t be a part of. Mr. Byrd’s eyes are fixed across the room as he takes in what he’s just been told and Cline is just staring at the side of his face, terrified.
“Six years of therapy, and we never got an answer for that day. Two weeks with the two of you, and she’s an open book.” He nods and presses the pen to paper again.
“She thinks she was a mistake,” I tell him quietly.
He chuckles and draws a hand down his face, clearly exhausted. “She’s a miracle is what she is. You know, Wendy always wanted a child, and I couldn’t give her one. After she was attacked, I blamed myself. I should have been there. I should have protected her. And then she found out she was pregnant, and she just smiled and said, ‘Look at the good that can come out of something so terrible.’ Like this tragedy had been an answer to our prayers. When she slipped into the coma, I thought they’d both die, but Audrey wasn’t going down without a fight. When she was born and Wendy died, there was no way I could let her go. I never expected things to be like this. Genetics are cruel in so many ways. But they’re incredible in so many others.”