FIRST COME THE beeping sounds. Then the antiseptic smell hits me. I open my eyes and look down. I’m dressed in a pink gown, and one of my arms is connected to an IV catheter. I’m in the hospital. And I have no memory of how I got here.
A nurse with muscular arms walks into the room with a tray of food. “Oh good, you’re up,” she says.
“What happened?” I ask her.
“You fractured your skull on the concrete pavement and have a moderate concussion and seven stitches on the back of your head.”
Now that she mentioned it, my head is radiating pain. Warm, hot pain, as if I were bleeding, even though I’m not anymore, according to her, since I now have stitches.
I lift my hand to feel them, but all I feel is gauze on the back of my head and Mom’s charm bracelet still dangling from my wrist.
It comes back to me: the taxi.
“The doctor ran blood tests,” she says. “Some of your levels are off.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You haven’t been eating or drinking enough,” she responds. “That’s why you fainted.”
“I wasn’t hit by a taxi?” I say.
“No, but the driver called for an ambulance after you collapsed on the sidewalk,” she says.
So it wasn’t the Cadells who tried to take me out. It was ED. He’s why I haven’t eaten anything since I stepped foot in New York, except for a bite of bagel.
I look out the hospital window and see that it’s dark out. “What time is it?” I ask the nurse.
“Seven, you’ve been sleeping all day,” she says. “A visitor’s been waiting to see you. I told him he needed to wait until you woke up so I could take your vitals.”
A visitor?
Maybe it’s Paul. The real one. Maybe he and Anthony are back from North Carolina now. But how would he know that I’m here? It’s probably Jason. He finally tracked me down after I ducked out of the FBI headquarters. Hospitals are always the first place they look.
The nurse takes my vitals. “You’re stable. You need to eat and drink now,” she says, pointing to the tray of food in front of me—some kind of cheese sandwich, red Jell-O, and apple juice. “I’ll get your visitor.”
She leaves the room, and a moment later, Eddie appears at the door.
My heart leaps into my throat—it’s not safe for him here! How did he even know where I was? And where’s Sarah?
“Hi,” I say, uncertain.
“Hi,” he says, walking over to me and lowering his body into the chair beside my bed. “It’s not the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara, but there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
I’d all but forgotten we were supposed to be at the Four Seasons this weekend, celebrating our second anniversary.
He takes my hands in his. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“The hospital called me. They checked your purse, saw I was the last one you called on the burner, and tried me. I dropped Sarah off at my parents’ and caught the first flight here.”
“Is it safe for you to be here with me?” I ask him.
“It might not be yet, but I couldn’t leave you alone in a hospital in another state,” he says, choking up.
“Thank you,” I say, grateful beyond measure to see him again.
“Paul’s back from North Carolina. He looked into baby Sally.” His voice sounds ominous. “She didn’t die of SIDS.”
I suck in a breath. “What do you mean?”
“She died in the hospital a day after she was born, but her death was caused by a TriCPharma drug—an opioid withdrawal seizure.”
“Oh my God.”
Even though Mom was in recovery by the time she had Sally, I know from my clinical training that opioid withdrawal symptoms in babies can last for months after a mother is clean.
“The Cadells paid off the hospital staff to tell her it was SIDS to keep the truth from her. They knew she could’ve sued them and brought their entire operation down.”
This family is evil incarnate. To think how many lives could’ve been saved if TriCPharma had ceased to exist fifty years ago?
But I still don’t understand why the Cadells care if I know about Sally now and why suddenly they’ve been trying to find out if my mom is still alive. People dying from TriCPharma withdrawal seizures has been a known fact for decades. It’s not any news that could jeopardize them now.
“Why are the Cadells trying to find out if my mom is alive now?”
His phone starts ringing. “It’s Paul,” he lets me know, then answers. “Hi, I’m at the hospital with her. She just asked me why the Cadells are after Irene now. Can I put you on speaker?”
Eddie puts his phone on my hospital tray and presses the speaker button.
“Hi, Beatrice,” Paul says over the phone.
“I’m so sorry about everything,” I say. “I hope they didn’t steal or damage anything at your apartment and that your dad is okay too.”
“He is, thanks, and our apartment is fine,” he says. “Listen, the Cadells are after your mom now because baby Sally was patient zero.”
“Patient zero?” I echo.
“The first baby on record to die of a TriCPharma-related drug seizure, establishing half a century-long of wrongdoing on the company’s part. Your mom found out the truth of what caused Sally’s death from Margot Cadell.”
Margot Cadell?
“Decades after Sally died, Margot also lost a newborn to a TriCPharma drug withdrawal seizure. The Feds found Margot’s diary, where she wrote about her struggles with anxiety and the first time she used TriCPharma drugs to help calm her. She found samples at her parents’ house after they had attended a TriCPharma conference. The drugs helped her feel better—temporarily—but quickly became addictive. Like Irene, she got clean before she gave birth, but it was too late. After she lost her baby, she was determined to take her family’s empire down and hired a detective to find other women who’d lost babies to their drugs. That’s when she uncovered what happened to Sally and that Sally’s dad, her cousin Billy, had known the truth the entire time. She threatened to tell your mom if he didn’t.”
“Remember when we went to Malibu, and Margot’s neighbors said she was in a volatile relationship with an older surfer guy?” Eddie asks me.
“Yes,” I say.
“That was Billy. There are dozens of pictures of him surfing online. It wasn’t Margot’s boyfriend. They were cousins, and Billy was trying to stop her from telling your mom the truth about what happened to his daughter,” Eddie says.
“So Billy knew all along?” I say.
“Yes,” Paul says over the phone. He was at the hospital nursery when Sally became distressed and overheard the staff talking about her withdrawal seizure. William Sr. made sure Billy never told Irene because of the problems it would’ve caused for TriCPharma. But years later, she found out from Margot, and when the Cadells found out about their correspondence, they shut down all communication between the two.”
That’s why Mom’s letter to Margot was returned unopened, the one I found in her box of letters. The Cadells made sure Margot never got it.
“How did you find all of this out?” I ask Paul. “Margot has been gone as long as my mom.”
“The Cadells thought the secret of what happened to Sally died when Margot died. What they didn’t know was that the father of Margot’s baby, Chris, knew everything too. They wrongly assumed Margot didn’t know who the father of her child was, but she did. Chris and Margot had had met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. She told him everything she’d learned about Sally before she died. She also told him that after the Cadells found out about her communication with your mom, Irene started facing death threats and even mentioned to Margot that she might be forced to disappear. He just gave up this information a few weeks ago,” Paul says.
“Why did it take him so long to come forward?” I ask.
“Margot had been clean for several months and then suddenly overdosed after their baby died. The Cadells blamed her death on a drug relapse caused due to grief over losing her newborn. But Chris never believed it. He thought she was murdered for trying to get the truth out about the known dangers of TriCPharma drugs and feared for his own life, so he kept quiet until last month when he was dying of kidney failure and finally decided to tell the Feds the truth before he passed.”
“Oh my God,” I say.
“He called a few agents to his hospital bed and told them everything. They opened an investigation to look into Margot’s death as a possible homicide and another one to find out if your mom was actually dead or if she had disappeared like she had told Margot she might be forced to do. Unfortunately, someone at the bureau leaked the information about the search for Irene to the Cadells. That’s why you’ve been followed. They wanted to see if you were in contact with your mom to see if she was alive.”
“So the Cadells are worried if my mom’s still alive that she might come forward about Sally now because of the testimony Chris gave?” I ask.
“Yes. My colleagues at the bureau believe your mom is their best chance to finally take the family down. She’s the only one that can testify about her relationship with Billy and what happened to their daughter, which will establish the Cadells knew about the dangers of TriCPharma drugs from the start. There’s a lot at stake, not just for the family, but for shareholders and the survival of the company.”
“What do you mean?”
“Billy is the current CEO of TriCPharma, which had a four hundred-billion-dollar market cap valuation last year, making it the fifteenth most valuable company in the world. His maintaining his position is critical to ensuring its stability. If your mom comes forward, he’s done.”
“But my mom might not even be alive,” I remind him.
“The agency got a tip. There was a confirmed sighting yesterday,” he says. “We’re trying to find her now.”
I gasp.
Mom really is alive?
Even after everything this week, it doesn’t feel real.
The tears start to come. Eddie puts his hand on my shoulder and smiles, knowing what this means to me.
My head is throbbing, not just because I cracked it on the pavement. I pick up the apple juice from the hospital tray in front of me, hoping it’ll help. My hand is shaking, so Eddie hands it to me, and I take a sip.
“I think Beatrice needs to get some rest now,” Eddie tells Paul over the phone.
“Okay,” Paul says. “I’ll let you guys know as soon I have more news.”
After we hang up, Eddie turns to me. “Once the Feds find your mom and explain everything to her, charges will finally be brought against Billy. He’ll be ousted from his position, and the company’s board members will want to move on, assuming TriCPharma can even survive. It’s just a matter of time before you can safely return home to Sarah and me. But most importantly, you’ll finally be able to reunite with your mom.”
“I can’t believe it,” I whisper. She’s been alive all this time. And she let me believe she was gone. After losing one daughter, she abandoned her second one. The pain is almost unbearable. I have so many questions. But I voice the easiest: “I wonder how Cristina found out she was alive.”
“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “I’m so sorry the Cadells hurt you, but things are about to change.”
I guess he didn’t ask the hospital staff why I’m here, or maybe they didn’t tell him.
He won’t understand why you haven’t been able to eat, ED tells me. I’m the only one that understands you. The only one that ever has. That’s why I never left you.
I look down at my pink gown and don’t say anything.
“You seem upset,” Eddie says. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but I promise this is all good news.”
I still don’t say anything.
“Are you upset because of Sally?” he asks. “I’m sorry you were robbed of knowing your half-sister.”
It comes down to this. A choice I have to make—listening to ED, the monster who has stolen so much from me, who’s telling me to lie—or telling Eddie, the man I love, the man who deserves to know the complete truth about me, the real reason I’m here.
Even if the fairytale ending he just laid out happens, I know there will still be bumpy waters ahead. And I also know that if I don’t come clean, I’ll be tempted to keep restricting my food as I try to wade through them. Secrets always beget secrets.
The hammering in my head is reverberating. It’s not the concussion or the stitches. It’s ED’s voice and my own sparring.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I finally say. “Something I should’ve told you a long time ago.”
“Okay …” Eddie says.
“I was pregnant when I was married to my ex-husband.”
He looks at me, confused, not understanding what this has to do with our conversation.
“The eating disorder I dealt with in high school after losing my mom resurfaced during my pregnancy. I had a hard time eating because of hormones, and it snowballed. I was also scared I wouldn’t measure up as a mom.”
“Oh, Beans, you’re so great with Sarah. Any child would be lucky to have you as their mom.” He says the words with so much conviction that they sting. Because I know what I’m about to tell him will probably make him question everything he’s ever thought about me.
“If I’m completely honest, I don’t know that I believed I deserved to be a mother,” I say. “Restricting my food was how I coped. I had a miscarriage, and my marriage didn’t survive it. After my divorce, I recommitted to my recovery, but …” I take a breath. “I’ve been struggling to eat since Tuesday when I found out my mom might still be alive.”
He takes in the information, connecting the dots back to his original question. “So you’re not in the hospital because of the Cadells?” he says.
“I fainted because I haven’t eaten for the last couple of days. I don’t want to make excuses. I just want you to know that after coming here alone, I realized my relationship with Sarah and you is what matters most to me in the world. Relapsing isn’t an option because you two mean everything to me. You have my commitment that I’ll fight like hell to always be there for both of you. I love you so much, and I want the chance to be a mother to Sarah if you’ll still let me.”
He doesn’t say anything and glances at the hospital tray filled with food in front of me. The silence between us is heavy.
“I wish you had told me this before,” he finally says.