Inside, I wash my hands at the kitchen sink. Three mugs on the drying rack—a blue one, a green one, and a white one. I've been looking at those mugs since I was five years old.
We eat on the deck with blankets over our knees because Steve insists on outdoor dining even when the temperature drops below forty and everyone else is too stubborn to argue. Dave talks about the pergola while Neil argues about the wasps the grape vines will bring, and Aunt Kathy tells them both to shut up and eat. Steve piles my plate with a second rack of ribs before I've finished the first.
When I leave, Aunt Kathy walks me to my car. She holds my face with both hands and kisses my forehead the way she's done since I was small.
"Stop overthinking," she says. "You never used to overthink."
"I never used to have anything to overthink about."
She laughs and pats my cheek and watches me back out of the driveway. I can see her in the mirrors, standing under the porch light with her arms folded, until I turn the corner.
The drive home is thirty minutes of dark highway and the smell of smoke in my hair. I shower, make a coffee, and sit on the couch with my notebook. I write up the meeting and the chess game, close it, and pull the blanket over my knees.
Aunt Kathy's voice is still in my head.
I just stopped pretending I had to choose.
Chapter 10
Jude
The camera above the day room door pans on a forty-second arc. Left wall to right wall, a slow mechanical sweep that covers every corner of the room except the eleven square feet behind the support pillar where the ceiling duct meets the wall. I've timed it across three weeks and fourteen sessions.
The pillar sits a few feet from the table where Hope conducts our sessions. A structural column, concrete, too thick for the lens to see past when the pan reaches its leftmost stop. At that stop, the lens holds for four seconds before it reverses. Four seconds of dead zone. I've watched the angle from every chair in this room and the gap doesn't change.
Gage leaves the doorframe twice per session. Once to check the hall. Once to answer the radio call that comes in at roughly the twenty-minute mark. Shift change coordination, always the same voice, always the same length. Thirty seconds from doorframe to wall and back.
The dead zone and Gage's gap have never overlapped.
Until last Thursday, when the rotation schedule shifted and the new shift officer started pulling Gage away ninety secondsearlier than the old one. I sat through the entire session doing nothing but confirming it. Camera pans left. Gage steps out. For nine seconds the room has no eyes on the pillar side.
Nine seconds is more than I need.
Hope comes in at two with her notebook under her arm and her pen behind her ear. She smells likecoffeeagain. Three cups today. I can track her mood by how much she's had before she gets here. One cup is a good morning, two is a bad one. Three means she didn't sleep. There's a faint stain on her left cuff where she spilled some.
"Afternoon." She pulls the chair to the table and sits. "How's the week?"
"You've had three coffees."
She looks down at her sleeve. Back at me. "That's not an answer."
"It's an observation. You look tired."
"I'm not tired. I had a lot of reports due." She opens to a fresh page."Where are we today?"
"Here."
Her hand stops. She looks up, smiles and then moves on.
"Kent tells me the medication review went through. Same protocol, another ninety days."
"Kennedy gets what Kennedy wants."
"That's not what I asked."
"You didn't ask anything."
Her mouth pulls sideways and she tries to flatten it. Fails.
