Chapter 13: The Torn Page

Dylan's POV

I drove them to the San Jose airport at four in the morning with the heater on high.

Erik sat in the back with his hood up and said nothing for fifty miles.

Hanne sat beside me with her bag on her knees.

She had not looked at me since the beach.

I had decided that was fair.

In Duluth the snow came sideways across the highway, and I drove the rental car at forty with both hands on the wheel.

"He's stable," Erik said from the back, to nobody.

"You said that," Hanne said.

"Mom called twice. The doctor said stable."

"Then we'll see him stable."

I knew what a stable heart looked like on a monitor, and I knew how many ways the word was used to calm people down.

I kept that to myself.

The hospital smelled like every hospital.

Their mother stood at the end of the waiting room in a good wool coat with a paper cup in her hand.

She looked at Erik, then at Hanne, then at me.

She did not say hello.

"It was a blocked artery," she said. "They put in a stent last night. He's awake."

"Is it serious?" Hanne asked.

"It's a stent, Hanne. People go home in two days."

"Then why did Erik come to California in the middle of the night?"

Her mother's mouth thinned.

"Because your father asked him to."

That was all of it.

A man with a small, real heart problem had sent his son across the country to fetch the daughter he had called ungrateful.

Hanne turned her head and looked at me.

It was the first time in a day.

I read it clearly: she had known, and she had come anyway.

"I'll wait out here," I said.

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