Page 76 of What You left in Me

My jaw locks. I look at his hand, at the soft skin, the veiny maps I carved into my mind as a child. Inside I say what I always say now: I’ll look after her. Not the way you mean. Not the way you’d want.

There’s the hospital smell, the sanitary, medicinal smell everyone thinks is neutral and comforting. It’s not comforting. It’s the smell of things being stitched and taped and papered over. It’s the smell of avoidance.

Dad drifts back to sleep. I watch him breathe and count the spaces between heartbeats like a man taking inventory. This is a night I will not forget because forgetting here would be a kind of mercy and mercy is not in my wheelhouse.

I stand, go to the window just to have a wall between me and the bed. My phone buzzes with a dozen messages, Eric needing an update, Scarlett asking if I'm still alive, an investor wanting a morning call. All of it is noise. The only thing that matters is the hairline fracture of a secret I’ve been circling for years.

I step out of the room and lean my shoulder against the cold paint. The hospital is quieter down here; people sleep in chairs like the living are ghosts too. I breathe once, make my decision, and then pull up the contact I use for things that shouldn’t exist but do.

Dialing the number is like dialing for an arsonist and asking for sparklers. My finger hovers, then presses.

“Wagner,” a voice says on the other end, clipped and professional. Derek.

“I need everything you can find on Eleanor Wagner.” My voice is low, clipped. I don’t bother with pleasantries; those are for boardrooms and coffin speeches. “The gallery she worked at. The year before my mother died. No detail too small.”

Silence, the kind that buzzes when people measure risk. “That’s… old, Finn. Messy.” The man’s voice is careful because he knows the edges of dives like this.

“Find me the mess.” I say it like I’m ordering a steak. No tenderness. No marinade.

He hesitates. “That’s personal. That’s—”

“—exactly why you’ll be paid.” My tone hardens. I’m not negotiating. I’m carving a path. “You find it, you bring it to me.”

There’s a sound, a dark little chuckle. “Are you certain that’s really what you want, Finn? Those are some long-buried bodies. Truth has thorny edges. Cuts both ways.”

“Truth is a tool,” I say. “And I can handle a knife.”

We both know the knife might cut. We both know truth might eat me when it gets ready. But the thing about being hungry is you stop listening to the risks. You start listening to what will fill you.

“Alright,” Derek says finally. “I’ll pull what I can. But this? This could ruffle a lot of feathers. People die over this sort of thing.”

“If people die,” I say, “they did before I knew, and I didn’t give them permission.” I hang up without another word because the slow part is done: the instruction is out into the world.

My hands are still. My mind, a different animal, is not.

There’s a rhythm that governs what I do. When I want something, I map it, find the weak points, and press until the structure gives. Eleanor has always been the kind of woman whothinks her hands were dirt-free because she asked other people to clean for her. That arrogance will be useful. I picture her face when she realizes someone has been looking in corners she assumed were dark enough to hide mistakes. I picture the little brittle way she clutches at the things she’s built as if she can glue them back together with her teeth. Ever since I saw the stills Eric sent, something’s been nagging at me. Eleanor’s involved in something and I need to find out what it is.

Then there’s Ariane, a swath of contradictions: fear, need, a luminous sort of decency that makes me irrational and dangerous. She’s sitting in that waiting room with her hands folded like a saint holding a secret. I think of the way she looks at Dad, the mix of duty and something softer. I think of the way she looks at me sometimes when she thinks I’m not watching… like a person recognizing a weather pattern in the sky and not knowing if she should run or stay.

I’m not sentimental about her. I’m not “in love” the way the movies sell it. If anything, it’s worse, an obsession that tastes like adrenaline and the idea of ownership. It’s ugly and holy at the same time. I would burn the world to make an unsullied patch where she could choose me without her hands shaking from fear or habit.

Derek texts:Got a lead. Gallery records, the assistant’s name… old address. Want me to dig?

I type back:Do it. Get anything on who she associated with. Who paid. Who owed her. Don’t waste time on gossip.My thumbs are chopping the words like wood.

I stand there in the corridor and watch the door I just left. Dad looks so small on that bed, it’s not fair. If he opens his eyes and tells me I was a good son, I’ll gag on the lie and smile.

Outside, the world moves. Hospital staff trade condolences and coffee. Someone cries quietly in a chair with their head in a sweater. It’s all ordinary grief and small mercies.

I put the phone in my pocket and slide my hands into my pockets like a man tucking weapons away. There’s a terrible humor in how tidy this is, the way I can reduce lives to checklists. Funny, in a black way. I hate that I can’t be soft. I don’t want to be. Softness gets you broken.

I walk back into Dad’s room because I promised him, silently, that I’d do what he asked. I sit on the edge of the bed and watch the man who built our house sleep in the glow of machines. I hold his hand... brief and respectful, a touch that says I am here and I will do the thing no one else will.

When I step out into the hallway again, my path is a straight line. The world is a set of problems and now Eleanor is a problem waiting to be solved. And I am a man who likes solutions.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with the truth when it’s in my hands. Maybe I’ll put it in a velvet box and present it on a silver tray or I’ll light it on fire and watch the smoke follow her like a bad perfume.God, what if this is all just a misunderstanding? A part of me hopes it is.Even though I’m not particularly fond of Eleanor, I don’t hate her either. And Dad? God, he’s obsessed with the woman. What if she really is into something shady and this is what finally breaks him?

For now, I focus on what’s important. Investigators in motion, the lead thread pulled. For now, I breathe shallow and keep my eyes open.