The call had never been an accident.
Margaret had made sure of that.
For three years, she had worked the evening shift on the east wing of St. Agnes Psychiatric Hospital, where routines mattered more than conversations.
Medication.
Observations.
Vitals.
Lights out.
Repeat.
She had learned long ago that hospitals had two kinds of silence.
The first was peaceful.
The second was protective.
Christy's corridor belonged to the second.
Margaret stood at the nurses' station with Christy's file open beneath her hands. She wasn't reading it.
She already knew every page.
Every admission date.
Every medication adjustment.
Every doctor's note.
What interested her most wasn't written in the file at all.
It was what had been removed from it.
Three nights earlier, she had broken protocol for the first time in three years.
She had returned a young girl's phone call.
Destiny.
Ezra's granddaughter.
The moment she'd heard that name, she'd stopped pretending coincidence existed.
