Chapter 2 - The Man at the Gate
Grant Weller didn't come toward the ambulance. He took out his phone instead.
"Stay where you are!" I shouted.
A police officer caught my arm before I could move. "Sir, your wife needs you. Let us handle him."
I stared at my hands. There was dirt on my cuffs and a smear of blood on one knuckle. I had struck my own sister in front of my daughter. There was no taking that back.
Claire's best friend, Jo, arrived after the dispatcher called the emergency contact on Claire's phone. She crouched in front of Emma.
"You're riding with me, peanut," she said softly. "We'll follow Daddy to the hospital."
"Mommy isn't dead?" Emma asked.
Jo looked at me. I couldn't lie to our daughter, and I couldn't make myself say what I feared.
"The doctors are helping her," I said. "We're going to stay close."
At the hospital, the emergency doors swallowed Claire and her stretcher. I tried to follow, but a nurse held up a hand.
"We need space to work. Someone will speak to you."
The officer from the cemetery joined me in the waiting area. A detective in a brown coat introduced herself as Lena Ortiz.
"Tell me exactly what happened," she said.
"Mallory threw a flowerpot at my wife while she was holding our child. I hit Mallory afterward. I shouldn't have."
Ortiz wrote it down without softening her face.
"Your sister has a head injury too," she said. "Her boyfriend claims Claire attacked first and you tried to kill Mallory."
"That's a lie."
"Then we need witnesses, not just anger."
Emma sat with Jo, clutching one pink mitten in both hands. She had refused to take it off. I almost asked why, but the trauma surgeon came through the double doors.
"Mr. Brooks? I'm Dr. Patel. Your wife has bleeding inside her skull."
I reached for the wall.
"Can you stop it?"
"We're taking her to surgery. I need you to understand how serious this is."
May you like
She paused just long enough for me to see how careful she was choosing her next words.
"There is a chance Claire may not wake up the way you remember her."
