Clara’s First Question
Chapter 05 - Clara’s First Question
Clara refused to go home.
She sat in the hospital parking garage with her wheelchair locked in place and stared through the windshield.
“Did you know?”
Ethan looked at her.
“No.”
“You let Aunt Rebecca make every decision.”
“I thought I was helping.”
“You were gone.”
The words were quiet.
They hurt more than if she had screamed.
Ethan lowered his head.
Clara’s voice shook.
“Mom died. I woke up and couldn’t move my legs. And then you disappeared into meetings.”
“I came home every night.”
“You slept here. That’s not the same thing.”
Ethan had no defense.
For three years, he had told himself he worked because Clara’s care was expensive, because the company employed hundreds of people, because life had to continue.
The truth was uglier.
He had been afraid to look at his daughter and see the life Laura would never have.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Clara wiped her face.
“I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to stop leaving.”
That night, Ethan returned to the mansion with a different kind of anger.
Rebecca was waiting in the drawing room.
“I heard you took Clara for tests.”
“Yes.”
“You went behind my back?”
Ethan almost laughed.
“Your back?”
Rebecca folded her arms.
“I have spent three years protecting that girl while you hid at work.”
“And you canceled her neurological reassessment.”
Rebecca’s face changed.
Just slightly.
Ethan placed the document on the table.
“Why?”
Rebecca looked at it.
Then at him.
“Because I was there when Clara came home after every failed therapy session. You weren’t.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“She was in pain.”
“She had nerve response.”
“She had false hope.”
Ethan stepped closer.
“You decided that for her.”
Rebecca’s eyes hardened.
“No, Ethan. I made the decisions you were too broken to make.”
Behind him, a voice spoke.
“And you never asked me.”
Clara sat in the doorway.
Rebecca turned pale.
Clara’s hands tightened around the wheels of her chair.
May you like
Then she asked the question that broke the family open.
“What else did you decide for me?”
