Chapter 9: The Tin

Maple Court Care Home was a long brick building at the edge of town with a plastic turkey still taped to the front door.

Lark parked in the visitors' lot at seven on Friday morning and turned off the engine.

"It's your errand," she said. "I'll be here in the car, doing paperwork about last night."

"You could come in."

"I could also get fired." She slid down in her seat. "Go."

The woman at the desk didn't ask for ID.

She looked at me for a second, and her mouth fell open.

"You're one of the Ellingwood twins," she said. "You've got your grandfather's jaw."

"How do you know that?"

"Everyone knows that jaw. Room twelve, honey. She's been up since five."

Room twelve was small and warm and smelled of lavender.

A tiny woman sat by the window in a quilted robe with a crossword on her knee and a pen behind her ear.

She was eighty-four years old. She had delivered half the babies in Marlow Falls for forty years.

Her eyes were sharp and she didn't take them off me.

"Close the door," she said.

I closed it.

"Your father called me at three this morning," she said. "He hasn't called me in thirty years. I knew it had finally come."

"What has?"

"The reason I kept my mouth shut."

She put the pen on the sill.

"Sit down, Calvin. You're too tall for me to look up at."

I sat on the edge of the bed.

"My father says you can tell me which of us came out first."

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