Chapter 26: Inspector Moo’s Pov

It’s came out the blue- so unexpectedly, that it didn’t really dawn on Fatimah what I had just said. She answered as if she were fielding a medical question in her lab.” Blood disorder. Pretty rare, serious. The body stops producing erythrocytes.”

“Red blood cells,” I said.

Fatimah glanced at me. “Why it’s not Mary?” Referring to my sister.

I shook my head. I sat rigid and stared straight ahead, my eyes were glassy.

It was probably the long pause that caused it to slowly sink in.

Fatimah whispered. “Not you?”

An awful stillness took hold in the car.

Oh, Moo, “Fatimah’s jaws dropped.

She pulled the Bronco onto the shoulder of the road and immediately reached out and hugged me. “What has your doctor told you?”

“That it’s serious. That it can be fatal.”

I saw the the gravity of that washed over her face. The gift, the pain. Fatimah was a doctor, a pathologist. She had taken in what was at stake before I even met her eyes.