Gideon continued.
Fever. Pain in my ears. I remember screaming. Afterward I could barely hear.
Rosalie waited.
My father took me to Dr. Bell.
The name meant nothing to her.
Gideon noticed.
He was the doctor in Coldwater before Dr. Whitcomb.
What did he say happened?
Infection.
Gideon’s pencil stopped.
Then he added:
My father said it was an accident.
Rosalie frowned.
Those are different things.
Gideon gave the faintest nod.
That contradiction had clearly troubled him for years.
When he was seventeen, another terrible episode of pain had struck him while repairing a fence. Something small had fallen from his ear afterward.
The black fragment.
His father had taken one look at it and gone pale.
Then he had ordered Gideon never to speak of it.
Rosalie read the sentence twice.
