Chapter 13: The Price List

"Say it," I told her. "Say what I owe."

Perry's mother drew back.

"I don't know what it is," she said. "Perry won't tell me."

"Then why say it?"

"Because five years ago he lay in that bed and said you'd promised him anything, for something that happened to him. He made me swear not to ask."

Her mouth shook.

"I swore. A mother does. But I've watched you pay on it ever since, and tonight you stood in his room and refused him."

"He asked for my husband's kidney."

"He asked for his life."

She wiped her face with the flat of her hand and went back toward the ward.

I stayed on the floor with my phone in my lap.

I hadn't kept coffee down for two weeks, and the hallway smell of floor wax made it worse.

The phone lit up.

Perry: Mom's getting a coffee. Come back in. Just you.

I almost didn't.

Then I got up, because I was tired of being afraid of a man in a cardigan.

The room was dim. Damian had gone, and so had my mother.

Perry sat up in the chair with the dialysis lines still taped to his arm, and the pink was gone from his face.

"Close the door," he said.

I closed it.

"You refused me in front of your husband," Perry said. "In front of my mother. In front of yours."

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