The Price of Misjudgment

Chapter 3 The Coldest Goodbye

The morgue was colder than the rain. The blanket they gave me did nothing against it. Leo lay beneath a white sheet on the steel table.

The room smelled of disinfectant. It was large enough for several tables, yet only Leo and I occupied it.

The medical examiner read from his clipboard. “Cause of death was asphyxiation secondary to an acute bronchospasm. Panic-induced.”

He turned the page. “There are also signs of blunt-force trauma to the cranium, consistent with repeatedly striking his head against a solid surface. Self-inflicted.”

A dark stain marked the sheet near Leo’s head. I fixed my eyes on it while the examiner kept talking. I could not cry. Every breath stopped high in my chest.

That stain was all the proof I needed of how hard he had struck the wall. The examiner’s remaining words passed without meaning.

The door opened. Hallway light crossed the floor, followed by the click of heels.

Chloe’s perfume reached me before she did.

“Eleanor.”

Richard still wore his tuxedo. Chloe stood beside him in a cocktail dress. They had come straight from their celebration.

The fluorescent lights caught the shimmer in her dress. Neither of them had even changed before coming to see the son Richard had sent away.

I turned. Richard had arranged his face for a funeral, though impatience kept breaking through.

“This is a tragedy,” he said, the words empty and rehearsed. “But it was his condition. You know how fragile he was. You coddled him, and now look what’s happened.”

He glanced at Chloe after he said it. She gave him a small nod.

I could hear Chloe’s report in his phrasing: fragile, coddled, condition. He had learned his lines.

Chloe rested her manicured hand on his arm and lowered her eyes.

Richard cleared his throat and set a folder on the nearest table. “These are the divorce papers. I’ve been very generous.”

“There’s a cashier’s check for five million dollars. Take it, sign, and we can all move on from this ugliness.”

The folder stayed closed. Five million dollars for my signature, my silence, and Leo.

He had reduced our son’s death to one more account he could settle. The cashier’s check waited beneath the divorce papers.

I pulled the sheet back far enough to see Leo’s face. His eyes were closed. I kissed his cold forehead once.

For the first time in his life, no sound or touch could frighten him. His face was still, and I hated the room for giving him peace this way.

I took a pair of sewing scissors from my purse. A plastic teddy bear button was sewn to the collar of Leo’s shirt.

*Snip.*

The thread parted. I closed my fist around the button until its edges hurt.

It was the last piece left of Barnaby. I had sewn it to Leo’s collar myself.

I tucked the sheet around my son again.

When I faced them, Richard shifted under my stare.

“For God’s sake, Eleanor, don’t make this difficult.” Richard sighed. “You don’t even have a lawyer. You have nothing.”

I looked straight at him.

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t need a lawyer.”