She said the word.

Juice.”

Mariana turned away from the monitor.

She hadn’t heard Lily say a whole word since the ambulance.

She reached over and smoothed Noah’s hair, and he let her, which wasn’t always the case.

The room phone rang at a quarter past four.

Mariana picked it up, listened, and set it back in the cradle without writing anything down.

“Records department,” she said.