Chapter 24: A Card for Two

The attendant had my card waiting in a white envelope with my name on it.

He held it out with both hands.

"Welcome home, Mrs. Ostrow," he said.

I looked up.

"I changed it on the list this morning," he said. "The judge's order let me. If that's all right."

"It's all right."

"It's what it says on the deed."

I took the card.

It was warm from the desk lamp.

Keaton stood beside me with his hands in his pockets and said nothing.

I walked to the resident gate and held the card against the reader.

The light went green.

The gate swung open with a soft click.

I stood there for a moment, in the lobby where I had once stood with a dead card and a pass for twenty-four hours.

The sofa under the mailboxes was empty.

Nobody was watching.

"You can go through," Keaton said gently.

"I know."

"Take your time."

"I'm not taking time. I'm taking a minute."

I went through.

On the eighteenth floor the corridor had a new carpet runner.

Someone had propped my front door open with a brick, and a smell of sawdust drifted out.

I knew that smell.

In the study, Tom was on his knees on the clean floor with a screwdriver in his teeth and a baby carrier on the rug beside him.

His daughter slept inside it in a knit hat.

Behind him stood a crib.

It was oak, pale and smooth, with slats close together and a headboard cut with a rounded top.

He had made it in his shop over four weeks.

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