Page 58 of Lethal Weakness

I don’t. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Merrill. Tell me the truth.”

Edmund is looking back and forth at us like he truly doesn’t know what I’m upset about. Not that it makes him innocent.

“Fine. I took a vial of blood. That’s all.”

Jack was right.

“That’s all? What gave you the right to do that?”

“I am one of the top surgeons in the country, Linden. I am qualified to take a blood sample.”

“I didn’t insinuate that you weren’t qualified, Merrill. I’m asking you why the hell you took blood from my daughter without my permission.”

Her jaw tenses, but she sighs in submission. “I wanted to test her white blood cell count.”

“Why?”

“Abnormal white blood cells can be a good indicator for certain cancers.”

All the hot anger that was cycling through my body is doused in ice water. “Why are you checking my daughter for cancer?”

Merrill glances at Edmund, and I finally register how sad he looks.

“We never told you this, Linden. We don’t like to talk about it to anyone, but we had a daughter before Turner was born,” Edmund admits. “While we were in medical school.”

“Before we were married,” Merrill adds, stiffly.

“What?” All I’ve ever known is Turner being an only child.

“She was five when she was diagnosed with Leukemia. It was a rare variant. She was gone before she turned seven,” Merrill says sadly.

My mouth drops open, and I can’t put it back together.

“I thought if I checked Avery’s blood early, we could figure out if she was showing any early symptoms, just as a precaution.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about your daughter?”

“It was a hard period in our life. Turner was just a baby when she passed. It was easier to tell the world he was our only child instead of explaining the loss of his older sister.”

“You still should have told me about taking Avery’s blood.”

“You’re right, and I apologize.” Merrill is so uncharacteristically apologetic that she must be telling the truth. Grief is a force of nature.

I wipe my hands over my face and through my hair, reigning in the overwhelming emotions I’ve experienced in the past thirty minutes. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry about your daughter.”

Maybe this is what we needed, a peace-making event that humanizes both sides of the party line. Maybe things could become more amicable moving forward.

I turn to leave the room, but stop short of the darkened hallway where I swear I see the shadows move. “There’s a painting that I saw in the house… I thought it was Avery but…?”

“We had our daughter’s portrait painted before she passed. She had blonde hair and green eyes like your Avery.”

Your Avery.

Unease weighs in my gut. “What was your daughter’s name?”

“Her name was Avery.”

My eyes squeeze shut, and any peacemaking energy I have in my body escapes with a single exhale. That name was Turner’s suggestion… He knew the whole time that he was naming our daughter after his dead sister, and he never thought to tell me.