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answers she needed? The real answers, not these speculations?
    She had been patient for long enough now. It would end here, beginning with her most urgent question of all.
    “When will I see Rudy?”
    Dr. Siders set his charts beside him and leaned forward. “As soon as we know—”
    “What is so hard about my questions about my brother? I’m asking for the most basic level of information—”
    “Shauna, when you’re ready to—”
    “I’m ready now! I want to see him now !”
    Shauna’s frustration dissolved into gut-wrenching tears. If only Rudy were here to calm her. Without him, without her memory of that terrible night, she was lost.
    “What did I do? What happened that is so awful no one can talk to me about it? I deserve to know the truth!”
    She put her hands in her hair and gripped it by the roots. Rudy hadn’t come to see her in the days since she’d come out of this coma. That fact alone should have been all the information she needed to confirm the monstrosity of her situation.
    She lifted her head and stared at them through blurred eyes. The room tipped. Dr. Harding was shaking her head and saying something, but Shauna could only hear her own guilt, screaming at her. She closed her eyes and saw nothing but Rudy.
    In a gasp for air she heard Dr. Siders say, “We’ve got to sedate her.”
    She shook her head and moaned. Rudy. Rudy.
    When a needle penetrated the thickest muscle in Shauna’s upper arm, she welcomed the pain. She allowed it to cover and quiet her grief.
    Dr. Harding’s coarse voice reached Shauna’s ears at the same time the sedative reached her brain. “You’re all fools.”

    Millie Harding barreled down the hall after Will Carver, taking one stride for the pharmacologist’s every three.
    “What was all that in there?” Millie asked.
    Carver pulled up and turned on his heel, saw who it was, then resumed his walk without answering. She caught him in four more strides.
    “Were you and Siders planning to tell her everything?”
    “I thought that’s what you were doing.”
    Millie got in Carver’s way, hands on hips. “What are you talking about?”
    “You’re going to hand her memory to her on a silver platter?”
    “I was perfectly misleading. And I didn’t give her any ideas that will actually help her recall what happened.”
    “I’ll be the one to decide that.”
    “No you won’t. I don’t even get to decide anything except whether I want to get paid at the end of the day.”
    “We’ll all get paid. But only if we behave like professionals.”
    Millie grabbed the arm of Carver’s jacket, stopping him. “You two might want to become better liars.”
    Carver jerked his sleeve out of Millie’s grip. “The only lies that ever really work are the ones that can actually be mistaken for the truth.” He stalked off. “Don’t question me again.”

3
    A light touch on her brow stroked away the pounding in Shauna’s head. She opened her eyes onto her hospital room, dimmed by evening hours.
    Wayne was leaning over her. “Shauna?”
    Exhaustion weighed her down.
    “They told me what happened.” She focused on the face of the man who, so far, had been her only ally. If she committed his high temples, narrow cheeks, and square chin to mind, maybe she would remember him. Maybe she could find her way back to the truth.
    There were all those maybes again.
    “You know, your Uncle Trent was supposed to be the one to explain all this to you.”
    “All what?”
    “Everything about Rudy. Everything that I don’t know and the docs won’t say.”
    “Why hasn’t he?”
    Wayne shrugged. “My guess is he doesn’t want you to have to deal with so many issues all at one time.”
    “And so everyone thinks that it’s more beneficial to stew over the grim possibilities rather than face reality?”
    Wayne raised his eyebrows as if to say, It’s twisted, I know.
    “We’re a backward group, my family.”
    “Each family is, in its own way.”
    “Trent Wilde isn’t