"Told you what?" Aria asked.
Raymond frowned at the ceiling, as if the answer were printed up there too small to read.
"She sat on the bed," he said. "Right where you are. It was dark, and there was a machine like that one. I couldn't move. She thought I was asleep."
"Lydia."
"She held my hand." His mouth twisted. "She never held my hand."
Aria waited. His grip had loosened, but he kept hold.
"She said, 'I did it to Eleanor, Raymond. Nobody asked any questions then. Nobody will ask now.'" He said it flatly, the way a man reads a line off a form. "Then she kissed my forehead and went home."
"Did you tell anyone?"
"I tried to." He looked at her. "I tried to tell you."
The numbers on the monitor kept climbing.
Aria turned his hand over on the blanket. She found the point on the inside of his wrist, three fingers above the crease, between the two tendons, and pressed it with her thumb.
"When was this, Dad?"
"I don't know." His eyes went to the window and the palms. "Before."
