The color
left her face.
Before she could make a sound, I forced out the first words I’d spoken since the crash.
“Lock the door.”
PART 2
Rosa stared at me like the dead had just sat up and asked her a favor.
For a few seconds neither of us moved.
Then she crossed the room, turned the lock, and pulled the curtain over the narrow glass panel so no one passing in the hallway could see in.
“You’re awake,” she said, coming back to the bed, still pale.
“Apparently.”
My voice came out like gravel dragged over concrete.
Rosa’s eyes flicked to the ceiling. “Cameras?”
“Not in patient suites. I made sure of that years ago, back when I still trusted my own family enough to want privacy from them instead of protection.”
“That’s a strange thing to be grateful for.”
“Most useful things are.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed. It
hurt more than the ribs did.
“Rosa,” I said. “If Vanessa or Preston finds out I’m conscious before I’m ready for them to know, what happens to you?”
She didn’t flinch, which told me she’d already thought about it.
“I disappear from the schedule. Nobody asks questions about a housekeeper who stops showing up.” She looked at the locked door instead of at me. “But I’m not leaving. Not after what your foundation did for my brother last year. Your office paid off eleven months of his cancer treatment before I even knew your name. People like Miss Vanessa think staff don’t notice things. We notice everything. We just remember who was decent to us, and who wasn’t.”
Something in my chest loosened that had been clenched since the ambulance.
“Friday,” I said. “Why Friday specifically?”
Rosa reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a crumpled page — a draft
