Chapter 12 - WHAT KHLOE REMEMBERED
Khloe woke to the sound of Harrison reading a children's book.
At first she thought she was dreaming.
Her eyelids felt impossibly heavy.
Her throat burned.
She turned her head.
Harrison sat beside the bed holding Goodnight Moon.
There was no child in the room.
Khloe made a faint sound.
Harrison looked up.
The book fell from his hands.
"Khloe?"
She blinked.
He stood so fast the chair tipped over.
A nurse rushed in.
Doctors followed.
Questions came.
Lights moved.
Khloe struggled to understand why her abdomen hurt.
Then memory returned.
The staircase.
Vanessa.
Blood.
Her baby.
Khloe grabbed Harrison's wrist.
"Caroline."
Harrison froze.
Khloe had never told him the name.
She had chosen it months earlier.
"She's alive."
Khloe started crying.
"She's alive?"
"Yes."
He leaned close.
"She's beautiful."
Khloe closed her eyes.
For several minutes, neither sibling spoke.
Later, when doctors allowed Harrison back inside, Khloe asked one question.
"Did Richard come?"
Harrison did not lie.
"Yes."
"To see me?"
"He tried."
Khloe looked toward the window.
"Did he go to Caroline?"
Harrison said nothing.
Khloe understood.
A tear slipped into her hair.
Then her expression changed.
"Harry."
"What?"
"Vanessa said something."
Harrison moved closer.
"Before she pushed you?"
Khloe nodded.
"She said Richard told her I would disappear from the business."
Harrison's jaw tightened.
"Anything else?"
Khloe struggled.
Her memory came in fragments.
Voices.
Marble.
Vanessa's perfume.
Richard standing behind her.
Then another detail.
"Richard had a blue thread on his sleeve."
Harrison frowned.
"Blue thread?"
"Near his cuff."
Harrison remembered the thread caught in Khloe's broken phone case.
A thin blue fiber.
Khloe continued.
"Vanessa grabbed my phone."
"Then Richard grabbed her."
"After I fell?"
"No."
Khloe closed her eyes.
"Before."
Harrison felt cold.
Khloe whispered.
"I think he was closer than the picture shows."
Harrison called Ruiz.
The blue thread went to the laboratory.
The result came back the following morning.
It matched the lining of Richard Harrington's custom suit jacket.
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Richard had told police he never touched Khloe.
The fiber said otherwise.
