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The officers are in the room, speaking to Caitlin’s parents. There is another man there too, in his thirties if I had to guess, standing behind Mrs. Beckett with a hand on her shoulder, the gesture warm, intimate. He knows her; he’s not with the police. Through the glass, everyone looks very bleak. One of the officers has his back to me, while the other is angled sideways, his hands resting on the chest of his load bearing vest while the other officer does the talking.
I brush up beside Luke in the nurses’ station. “What’s happening?” I ask in a quiet voice. “Why are the police here?” I hold my breath, afraid of what he might say.
He looks at me. “They’re saying now that maybe it wasn’t a suicide attempt after all.”
I pull back. The air leaves my lungs and the hallway turns suddenly warm.
“What do you mean?”
He blinks hard, and I know what he’s going to say before he says it.
“They think that maybe she was pushed.”
“Pushed?” I ask, like I don’t understand the meaning of that little one-syllable word. I say it again and then again in my mind until it loses meaning. Pushed.
“Yes,” he says, quite calm in comparison to my own reaction, yet he’s had a few minutes to sit with it, to live with the knowledge of what the police know, to bat it around in his mind. “Pushed.”
“By who?”
“No one knows.”
The Becketts look up as I enter the room. They’re adrift, their minds a million miles away from this hospital room. The police have left, but the other man is still here, standing propped against a wall, his arms crossed against a dark crewneck sweater. His gaze lifts when I come in; our eyes meet and I see the resemblance right away. He’s a younger version of Mr. Beckett in height and body shape, but with Caitlin’s features: the same dark hair and eyes.
“Meghan,” Mr. Beckett says, rubbing at his forehead before zeroing his heavy eyes in on me, and it strikes me how utterly done in he looks, with both mental strain and physical exhaustion.
“Can I get you anything?” I ask.
“No,” he says, with a curt shake of the head, and I try not to read into the brevity of his reply.
Mrs. Beckett turns away, saying nothing. She sits on the chair beside the bed, pulled up close to it with her back to me so that I can’t see her face. “Meghan, this is our son. Jackson.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say, coming further into the room where the air is different all of a sudden, charged.
“You too,” he says, pushing himself from the wall. “I’ve heard quite a lot about you from my parents.”
My eyes go to Mr. Beckett, who says, “We told him how much you’ve been doing to help us and how you’re a godsend.”
“It’s nothing. I’m happy to help.”
“Well, we’re grateful. Jackson,” he tells me, “flew in this morning to be here, to be with Caitlin. He landed just a couple hours ago and came straight from O’Hare.”
“It was nice of you to come,” I say.
“I’m just sorry I couldn’t be here sooner.” Jackson steps closer to the bedside, coming to stand behind Mrs. Beckett. His hands fall to her shoulders, offering comfort. I watch him, watching the way his eyes go to Caitlin in bed. I search in vain for signs of emotion, of sadness, of disbelief, finding none, but maybe he’s just being stoic. It’s been days since she arrived at the hospital and, I shouldn’t judge, but I think how, if Bethany were still alive and something like this happened to her, I wouldn’t have hesitated; I would have been on the first plane I could find.
“You’re here now, and we’re grateful. Caitlin would be too,” Mr. Beckett says, and I wonder if anyone but me notices the way Jackson quietly sneers at his father’s words—Caitlin would be too—something cynical rising to the surface before it disappears.
My mind goes back to what Mrs. Beckett told me in confidence days ago, how Caitlin and her brothers aren’t close, how her own relationship with Caitlin is different than the one she has with her sons, and how she isn’t so sure but that they don’t resent Caitlin for it.
Jackson must feel me looking at him because his eyes move swiftly to mine, too quickly to anticipate, and he catches me staring.
“Our oldest, Henry,” Mr. Beckett goes on, and I look to him, embarrassed and grateful for somewhere else to focus my attention, “wishes he was here too, but he’s in the middle of a trial and can’t get away. Jackson was in London for work when it happened,” he says. “He got here as soon as he could.”
“You must be exhausted if you’ve just come from London,” I say, thinking of the long flight and of jet lag.
He shrugs. “Nothing a little caffeine won’t fix.”
I nod, looking back to Mr. Beckett. “I saw the police here earlier,” I say, treading lightly.
