“Lil,” he said, the syllable falling from his lips.

“That’s pretty,” Hugh said. “Old school.”

George hated that he’d left her after they argued. He knew she’d be well taken care of in his absence, but he also knew he had fucked up. He’d just never been good with speeches. He didn’t know how to say what he was feeling. Pastor Mike used to call him a man of few words, but reminded him that deeds spoke a thousand times more loudly.

That’s why he was here, wasn’t it?

The drive here had been long, and his thoughts had provided the soundtrack for the journey. He had imagined Lil in all the incarnations of her life—the time she was a baby with croup and he sat up with her all night in a steamy bathroom, the shower blasting hot water; the Father’s Day when she tried to make him pancakes for breakfast and set a dish towel on fire; the sound of her voice harmonizing with his when they sang at church. Then he’d pictured himself like an avenger, swollen to comic-book-hero proportions, bursting through the doors of the clinic and leaving destruction in his wake.

He had imagined screams and falling plaster and a haze of dust. But somehow although he could see himself when he started shooting, everything afterward was fuzzy. Revenge, in theory, throbbed with adrenaline and was clean with conviction. In reality, it was rushing into a house on fire, and forgetting to map out your exit.

Behind him, George heard a ripple of conversation. He turned around, the phone still clutched to his ear. “Quiet,” he ordered.

“What’s going on in there?” Hugh asked.

George ignored him, trying to focus on the scene in front of him. The women were whispering, and the baby killer he’d shot was still lying on the floor, a bandage twisted around his thigh. “Joy needs to use the bathroom,” said the kid.

The one who’d scratched him.

He glanced at her hands, making sure they were still tied.

“Well, hold it in,” he muttered.

The nurse who was kneeling on the floor looked up. “It’s not that,” she said. “She needs to check her pad. She just had a—”

“I know what she had,” George snapped, interrupting.

“Is everything okay?” asked the cop. There was a strange note in his voice, a vibration.

“I have to go.”

“Wait!” Hugh said. “George, I wasn’t lying before. I didn’t say your daughter was here. I said she wants to talk to you. She’s listening to the news, George. And they don’t get things right. They’re not going to give your side of the story to her. Only you can do that.” Hugh paused. “I can make that happen, for you. I can get her on the phone.”

“Wait,” he muttered, distracted.

“What’s wrong, George?” the cop asked. “Talk to me.”

He was staring at the television that had been on the entire time. When he first got here, there was some daytime food show on. But now, there was a breaking news banner and a picture of a reporter with the clinic behind her. Her lips were moving, but the volume had been lowered; George couldn’t tell what was being said.

What if Hugh was right? What if Lil was listening?

“Where’s the remote?” he asked. When the women stared at him like he was crazy—was he? Or was he thinking clearly for the first time in hours?—he barked at them again. “The remote!”

The old lady pointed to a shelf near the television.

“Get it,” he commanded. He was still holding the phone, but he had tuned out the cop’s insistent voice.

The old lady was fumbling with the control. She dropped it, picked it up, and pointed it at the television. “I think this is the right button,” she said, but nothing happened.

“Faster!” George yelled, and he jerked the gun at her.

The woman screamed and dropped the controller again.

“Leave her alone!” the kid cried.

“George?” Hugh’s voice blistered against his ear. “George, who was that yelling?”

“Give her the damn thing,” he ordered, pointing to the teenager. “Kids always know how to work stuff like this.”

“What kid?” Hugh said.

George let the phone fall in his hand, holding it against his thigh, as the girl managed to increase the volume even with her hands bound.

“… given that Goddard was in fact dishonorably discharged for killing civilians during his service in Bosnia.”

The screen cut to a studio anchor. “So we can say that there’s a historical pattern of violence …”

“Turn it off,” George breathed.

He couldn’t even see the screen. His vision was blurred, and all he could imagine was Lil listening to this utter bullshit. “That isn’t what happened,” he muttered.

He could feel the phone vibrating against his thigh, emitting sounds.

Suddenly it was 2001 and he was in Bosnia and he was doing his job and everyone was out to get him.

He thought of Lil, hearing that bullshit. He thought of how, when she was little, she would always play the princess and he had to be the prince who saved her from the ogre or the quicksand or the evil queen. She had never seen him as anything but a hero. And now?

He reached for the nearest piece of furniture—a lamp—and hurled it against the wall.

The women screamed.

He could hear the cop yelling, trying to get his attention.

He hung up the phone.

Well, fuck. They had his attention now.

—

HUGH HELD THE PHONE IN his hand, the line dead. He had heard two critical things in the background during this last phone conversation: Wren’s voice, and the television report on George’s military service.

He sank down onto a chair and speared his hands through his hair, making it stand on end. When he was young, Bex was forever smoothing down his cowlicks. That’s what it really came down to, wasn’t it? Looking presentable to the world, no matter who you were when the cameras weren’t rolling and the door was closed.

When push came to shove, was he a hostage negotiator, or a father?

When the two came into conflict, which triumphed?

He looked up, beckoning over a SWAT team member. “Where’s Quandt?” he asked.

“I can get him for you, Lieutenant.” The man hurried off and Hugh stared down at his makeshift desk, weighing his options.

George Goddard was losing control.

Hugh had heard Wren’s voice.

She was still alive.

And this might be his only chance to keep her that way.

A shadow fell over him, and Hugh glanced up to see Quandt standing with his arms crossed. “I can only assume that the reason you want to see me is because you’ve come to your senses and you’re ready for my men to move in,” he said.

“No,” Hugh replied. “I want you to cut communications.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t want any comms in that building that don’t come directly from us. I want the phone lines cut, except for the hard line to the clinic that connects to me. No TV signal, no Wi-Fi, nothing. I can’t risk him seeing anything else on TV that will send him over the edge.”

“What if a hostage tries to communicate with us? Say one of them tries to use her cell—”

“I know what I’m doing,” Hugh said firmly.

He recognized the risks. But he also realized this decision would isolate George, so that the only information the shooter got was directly from Hugh himself.

Quandt looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded. He walked off, shouting orders to his men, who would reach out to the cellular companies and cable company and effectively make the clinic an island.

Hugh picked up his phone and texted Wren one more time, just in case she saw it.

Trust me, he typed.

—

OLIVE HAD BEEN A PROFESSOR for thirty-five years before she retired. Her course was on the workings of the brain, and it always had a waiting list. She started each semester by showing a random student a photo of himself or herself at an event or in a certain geographical place. After a few questions, the student was able to remember that moment, and to fill in details. The catch? The student had been Photoshopped into the picture, and had never actually been there.

Olive would explain to her students that the brain is constantly telling us lies. It simply can’t record every detail that our eyes see, so instead, the occipital lobe adds what it assumes is there. The brain isn’t a video recording—it’s more like a photo album, and in between those pictures it fills in the blanks. The result is that false memories can be created more easily than any of us want to believe. There will be incidents you swear on your mother’s grave happened a certain way … but didn’t.

She wondered what she would remember of this incident. She hoped, very little. With any luck she would be granted a wondrous and selective amnesia. She hoped the same for all the others who were huddled in the waiting room, watching George fight with his own demons.

And what of George, the shooter? What had his brain pieced together inaccurately, she wondered, to bring him here today?