In Bed With My Ex's Brother-in-Law novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: The Old Alpha's Ride

"Then we go get him," I said.

The nurse was quiet on the line.

"He's in a locked unit, ma'am. And she holds the papers."

"Does he want to stay?"

"He turns his face to the wall."

"Then he doesn't."

She paused, lowering her voice.

"I'm on with my friend tonight," she said. "Eleven to seven. The stair door at the end of his hall sticks if you push it right."

Kacey was sitting up in the bed beside me with her hair flat on one side.

She'd heard every word.

"I need a clipboard," she said. "And a Sharpie. And a phone, because Noreen's got mine."

She made the board at Gran's kitchen table while the bacon cooked.

The alphabet in big black letters, the numbers under it, YES and NO in the corners.

She did it twice, because the first time she spelled it too small and cried a little and started over.

Rance didn't say anything.

He went out and gassed up the truck.

We drove to Casper that night, the three of us across one bench seat.

Two hours of black highway and antelope eyes in the headlights.

Rance parked at the far end of the care home lot, under a dead light.

He looked up at the second floor.

"That one," he said. "Third from the end."

"Stay here."

"I've stood in this lot before." His hands were tight on the wheel. "I can stand in it one more time."

The stair door stuck, and then it didn't.

The nurse's friend was waiting on the landing in purple scrubs.

She didn't ask our names. She just walked us down the hall past the dark rooms, and opened the third door from the end.

It smelled like bleach and a tray of food nobody had touched.

He was lying on his side in the narrow bed with his face to the wall.

He'd gotten so small.

I sat down on the edge of the mattress.

I'd brought the Riverton paper. I unfolded it, loud.

"Feeder steers, Torrington," I read. "Up two and a quarter. Bred heifers steady. Somebody paid twenty-one hundred for a pair of black baldies in Worland, and I'd like to see them."

The blanket moved.

"Hay's up again," I said. "Everybody's crying about it."

Slowly, an inch at a time, he rolled onto his back.

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