“Yes,” Amanda said. “Anna, you know how she gets. And it was embarrassing. People were staring.”
“So you left her in the car?” My voice shook now, and I hated that. I hated how my body responded to her like she still had authority over my nervous system.
“For a bit,” she said, like this was reasonable. “She needed to cool off.”
“In the car,” I said again. “In a heatwave.”
“Anna,” she sighed, long and theatrical. “Don’t do that thing where you twist my words. We parked in the shade. The window was cracked.”
“Was it locked?” I asked.
Another pause. “Well, obviously,” she said. “I’m not leaving the car unlocked with our stuff in it.”
I stared at the wall across from Lucy’s bed. The paint was that hospital beige meant to be calming, but it suddenly looked like the inside of a coffin.
“How long has she been there?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Amanda said, impatient now. “We’re busy. The other kids are having a great time.”
Then she laughed— not cruelly, exactly, but carelessly. Like someone laughing at an inconvenience.
“We had such a great time without the drama,” she said. “Honestly, it was kind of nice.”
That was when I said, very clearly, “Lucy is in the hospital.”
Silence.