Chapter 2 - THE FALL SIX MONTHS EARLIER
The ambulance arrived because Graham’s cousin Meredith called from the driveway.
Graham did not stop her.
Judith tried.
By the time paramedics entered the house, she was already saying Nora had stepped backward while carrying the casserole.
Nora corrected her from the stairs.
“She shoved me.”
Graham remained silent.
At Mercy Health in Cincinnati, imaging showed two fractured ribs, a badly sprained shoulder, and a small pelvic fracture that would heal without surgery if complications did not develop.
Nora was admitted overnight for pain control and observation.
Graham sat beside the bed after midnight.
He had changed out of the black suit he wore to dinner.
He looked smaller in a gray hospital sweatshirt.
Nora watched him for several minutes.
“What happened to Charles?”
Graham closed his eyes.
Charles Holloway was his seventy-year-old father.
Six months earlier, Charles had fallen down four steps in the same house.
Judith said he lost his balance while reaching for the railing.
The fall fractured his hip.
During rehabilitation he developed severe delirium after an infection. Even after the infection cleared, his recovery was slow. He moved temporarily into an assisted-living community near Montgomery because the family home had too many stairs.
Judith took over most of his finances.
Graham became interim president of Holloway Architectural Millwork, the custom woodworking company Charles had built over thirty-eight years.
Everyone called it temporary.
Almost nothing about it felt temporary anymore.
“What marks?” Nora asked.
Graham rubbed both hands over his face.
“The week Dad fell, I saw bruises on his arm.”
“What kind?”
He looked toward Nora’s shoulder.
“Like that.”
Two distinct oval marks.
Close together.
Nora remembered visiting Charles in the hospital after his accident.
His arms had been covered with bruises, but he took blood thinners. The nurses mentioned how easily he marked.
Nobody treated two small bruises as meaningful.
Except, apparently, Graham.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I asked Mom.”
“And?”
“She said Dad fought her when she tried to stop him from driving.”
“Did you believe her?”
Graham hesitated too long.
Nora turned her face away.
“Jesus.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You suspected.”
“Yes.”
“And tonight you recognized them immediately.”
He stood.
“Nora, you don’t understand what was happening then.”
“Then explain.”
Charles had been planning to remove Judith from several financial authorities shortly before the fall.
Not divorce.
Not even separation.
He had simply become uncomfortable with how aggressively Judith had begun managing his business interests after he developed heart problems.
Graham knew that much.
“What happened the night he fell?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Did he tell you?”
Silence.
Nora looked at him again.
“Graham.”
His voice became almost inaudible.
“The next morning Dad said Mom grabbed him.”
Nora felt something inside her marriage shift permanently.
“And you did what?”
“He was medicated.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I told myself he was confused.”
Nora stared at her husband.
Six months later, Judith had grabbed another person.
Another staircase.
May you like
Another story about an accident.
And Graham’s first instinct had still been to help everyone hide it.
