Brandon lifted his tearful face. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
“Why are you sorry?” Chloe asked gently.
“Because I brought her into our family,” Brandon cried.
Chloe considered his words for a moment before offering him her stuffed giraffe. “You didn’t know she was dangerous.”
Brandon hugged the plush giraffe against his chest, crying quietly, while Chloe softly patted his shoulder. “She fooled the plant too, you know.”
That innocent observation finally shattered Brandon’s remaining composure, and he openly cried while sitting there on the hospital floor.
Rosalyn looked toward the window to conceal her own emotion.
During her years practicing medicine, she had delivered heartbreaking diagnoses and helped families through unexpected losses, but she had rarely witnessed anything as pa!nful as a father realizing that someone he trusted enough to marry had placed his only child in serious danger.
The second bottle underwent testing later that evening, confirming dangerous concentrations of thallium.
