Chapter 4 - The Ticking Clock
Grandma, why do you look tired?
Marcus asked her that Tuesday night, sitting at the kitchen table, pushing rice around his plate.
“Grandma’s just getting old, baby,” she said, forcing a smile, smoothing his hair back from his forehead.
The same spot where somewhere deep inside, something was growing that shouldn’t be there.
“Eat your dinner.
” She didn’t tell him about the money.
She didn’t tell him about the deadline the hospital had given her.
12 days to secure the funds or lose their surgical slot to another family on the waiting list.
She didn’t tell him that she had already looked into a second mortgage on the house, a personal loan, even the possibility of driving for a ride share company at night after her cleaning shifts.
What she also didn’t know was that four days from that quiet dinner, fate and one small, curious baby girl would force a secret she’d been guarding for weeks out into the open in the last place on earth she wanted it revealed, Michael Carter’s living room.
She thought no one had noticed. She was wrong, and the truth was about to come out in the worst possible way.
By Saturday morning, Angela hadn’t slept properly in 9 days.
Her hands trembled slightly as she measured coffee grounds into the machine in the Carter kitchen.
She’d taken to hiding her phone in her apron pocket on silent, terrified of missing a call from the hospital, but equally terrified that Michael would notice her checking it every few minutes.
Zoe was down for her morning nap. Michael was in his home office on a call with investors in Tokyo about a potential new hotel acquisition in Kyoto. A deal that had been in the works for 8 months and was worth, by his estimate, close to $340 million.
Angela moved through the kitchen on autopilot.
May you like
Wiping counters that were already clean, folding towels that didn’t need folding, anything to keep her hands busy so her mind wouldn’t spiral toward Marcus, toward the mass on the scan, toward the countdown clock.
ticking in the back of her skull. Nine days left.
