#twiceminded

So then came the endless nights of tending to Katrielle’s anxieties, the endless phone calls asking and pleading about his recovery, and the cacophony of information about Alfendi’s case, throwing around the words suspect and killer so easily at him, as if it were obvious from the start. (Her boy would never, he wouldn’t ever.) After a month and a half of awful agony, when her patience was at her wit’s end-

The phone rang. 

“Mrs. Layton? The detective working on the case has allowed family to visit Alfendi Layton.”

After steadying her trembling hands and blinking away her tears, Claire scanned the house once again, getting her keys, her wallet, her purse, her anything, before hopping in the car and driving to the hospital. Hospitals unsettled her to her core, with their flourescent lights and stark white walls, but for her children? No feat was too scary. 

“Alfendi.” His name was the only word she could manage to muster when she stepped into Alfendi’s hospital room. He was bandaged all over and hooked up to strange machines, but he was there in front of her, alive and breathing, and that’s all that mattered at the moment.