Chapter 11: The Scan

Joost's POV

For nine days I sat alone at the leadership table and stared at a brass plate with the wrong name on it.

On the tenth morning I found the right one.

It was in the bottom drawer of my father's desk, under his oxygen filters.

FEMKE BRANDSMA, scratched at the edge where the engraver's tool had slipped, the same plate that had sat in front of her chair for two years.

My father had not even thrown it out.

He had kept it in a drawer, where he could find it.

I put it in my cut pocket and said nothing to anyone.

That afternoon, I drove Sanne to the hospital.

"I told you, Joost," she said from the passenger seat, one hand flat on her middle. "Your father's doctor does everything we need."

"My father's doctor works out of a house in Grand Rapids with no sign on the door."

"He's excellent."

"I want the club's baby seen at a real hospital." I kept my eyes on the road. "Humor me."

She did not answer.

I did not tell her that I kept thinking about a yellow slip of paper Femke had set in front of me.

The date on it was three weeks before the table.

I had known my father wanted her out of that chair.

I had not known he had already paid for the plate.

I had not known a lot of things, and I was beginning to notice how many.

At the hospital I told the woman at the desk that my girlfriend had pains.

It was a lie, and I told it well.

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