Chapter 24: Both Halves

The banner outside the parking garage had a new face on it.

It was a nineteen-year-old defenseman from the juniors, grinning, with a gap in his teeth.

I looked up at it as Nolan parked the truck.

It was a year to the week since a courier had walked a white box into this clinic.

"They finally took it down," I said.

"They took it down in November. The owner did it himself, with a ladder."

"I forgot."

"I didn't." He turned off the engine. "I was holding the ladder."

I laughed.

The waiting room was the same waiting room.

The same cold chairs, the same nurse behind the same counter, the same six women looking up from their phones.

I stopped inside the door, and my body remembered where it was.

Nolan's hand found the small of my back and stayed there.

"We can leave," he said. "You don't owe this place a thing."

"I know."

"Then why are we here?"

"Because I want to do it in the right order."

The nurse at the desk had recognized me before I reached her.

She was young and flushed, and she had a plastic folder in her hands already.

"Mrs. Rudd," she said, and flinched. "Sorry. Ms. Maitland?"

"Jocelyn."

"Jocelyn. We're so glad to see you. The doctor cleared her whole afternoon."

"She always does."

She gave me the folder across the counter.

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