I let Russ make the call so that it wouldn’t seem to come from me. Mark didn’t argue or question when Russ told him what had happened and what we wanted. Russ said he needed help, and Mark came.
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop the twist in my heart. His wife was a lucky woman to have a husband she could always count on to be there for her, assuming, of course, that he treated her the same way he treated all the other people in his life.
Oliver went in to sit by Noah’s bed, and Russ and I headed down the hallway to wait by the elevators. When Mark stepped off, he nodded at me briefly, the same way he had the few times we’d run into each other since our talk about how we needed to end our friendship. It was a nod that said I don’t want to be rude by not acknowledging you exist. It was also a nod that didn’t encourage any more interaction than that.
I tried not to let it hurt me. I had no right for it to hurt. The decision to end our friendship had been mine, not his.
He turned toward Russ. “Do you know who Noah’s doctor is?”
“Dr. Johnson,” Russ said. “He’s the doctor who saw him in the ER. Noah doesn’t have a regular doctor as far as I know.”
Mark’s lips thinned. “I was hoping for Santos. We’ll have to come at it differently now.” He rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip. “I can take a look at Noah unofficially, but unless Johnson’s willing to sign off on it as suspicious, I don’t have any authority here. The best I might be able to do is ask him as a professional courtesy to run a few additional tests. Is Oliver here yet?”
Russ nodded, and I marveled once again at the way everyone in this town seemed to know everyone else. They’d lived their lives together, and that built a sense of connectedness. As much as I fought against it, I was the wrong-colored crayon.
“Since he’s official next of kin, it’d help if we had him on our side,” Mark said.
Russ led the way down the hall, with Mark next to him. Even though it went against all my natural tendencies, I hung back and tried to stay on the sidelines. My parents had raised me to take charge and be noticed. Stepping aside felt about as comfortable as chewing an ice cube. But I wasn’t the one who could do the most good here.
When we entered Noah’s room, Oliver was sitting by his side, staring.
Something flickered across Mark’s face, like a mixed-up bowl of regret, sympathy, and sadness. It felt like all those times before where I’d suspected he had one foot in the present and the other was caught on something in the past. Now that I wasn’t his friend anymore, I’d probably never know the cause. That didn’t stop me from wanting to smooth the lines out of his forehead and tease him until he flashed his dimples.
Mark pulled a chair from the other side of the room over to where Oliver sat. “Russ and Nicole asked me to come. They thought you might like someone to talk to who’d be able to give you a second opinion and make sure that every option for Noah’s recovery has been explored.”
Oliver blinked in my direction. His blinks always seemed to take a fraction of a second longer than a normal person’s. That might be part of why he reminded me so much of an owl.
“That was nice of them,” he said. “But the doctor said he got knocked down or kicked by those horses. Don’t know what kind of a second opinion we need on that.”
Mark crossed an ankle over his knee. “Well, I’d like to rule out a different cause for Noah’s fall, like a stroke or a seizure. I’d have also recommended a check of his blood sugar levels if your family has a history of type 2 diabetes. We can’t tell any of that unless we run some tests, and treatment will vary depending on the cause of his fall.”
Mark sounded so self-assured. If he hadn’t told me that he struggled with social interactions, I never would have guessed. He’d learned to hide it well. A twinge of regret twisted my heart, but not for the loss of Mark’s friendship this time.
As hard as I’d tried, I’d never learned how to hide my nerves when speaking in a courtroom. That failing had doomed my career as a lawyer and ensured my parents would never be proud of me. I’d had to accept that when I gave up practicing law to move to Fair Haven, but it still ached sometimes, like phantom pains in an amputated limb.
Oliver’s eyes had gone even rounder than before, a condition I wouldn’t have thought possible. He swore. “I didn’t realize so many other things could have gotten him here.”
Mark was nodding. “And you and I both know from working with the police that we need to at least consider that someone did this to Noah.”
Oliver cursed again, but it had a different quality this time. More like he was cursing at Mark for suggesting it. “Noah’s been working hard to turn things around. We both have. Neither of us wanted to end up like our drunk, worthless dads. There’s no one anymore who’d want to hurt him.”
The anymore was telling. At some point, there had been someone who wanted to hurt him.
I tapped my fingers against my leg. Noah’s occasional slips back into his addictive patterns meant that even though he was trying to change the course of his life, he might have still made enemies—including people he owed money to.
But it looked like following that path in the conversation would only turn Oliver against us. He was determined to defend Noah’s character, something that seemed common among the people who’d lived their whole lives in Fair Haven. If they ever accepted me fully as one of their own, I’d have the staunchest defenders I could ask for. In the meantime, I wore a scarlet O, for outsider.
Where Oliver was concerned, we needed to approach this from a different angle. In an interview-type situation, Mark tended to run straight at a problem, so it was time for me to move from the sidelines, literally and figuratively.
I stepped to the end of Noah’s bed. If there was one thing I’d learned from my time as a defense attorney, it was that being a victim of a crime didn’t necessarily mean you’d done anything wrong. “Good people, innocent people, are attacked all the time. For all we know, someone went into the stable looking for things to steal and Noah caught them.”
Mark slid a look in my direction, eyes crinkled at the corners, that said good point, and for a second, it felt like it had when we’d worked together to solve Uncle Stan’s murder.
Oliver followed the look and gave his uncanny blink. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
Mark rose to his feet. “So what I’d like to do is go talk to Dr. Johnson, with your permission, and see what other tests we could run to rule out the possibilities.”
Oliver nodded. Russ told Oliver we’d check in with him later to see how Noah was doing, and we filed out. The hallway felt wide open in comparison to the cramped room.
Mark motioned us down the hallway a bit. “I should be able to get a look at the shape and dimension of the wound as well. That’ll help us figure out what might have made it. Hopefully with all of the extra testing, we’ll know better whether this was an accident or not. I’ll let you know the results.”
I met Mark’s gaze for the first time since he’d arrived. I could take comfort from the fact that it contained no malice at least. He’d forgiven me.
“Thank you,” I said. “For helping us. Helping Noah.”
“Any time.”
And the soft tone of his voice made me think he meant it.