The Lost Quarterback Returns novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Sitter's Rent

At dinner my mother-in-law calls the clinic 'a kindness', my husband flinches when I say I told him so, and in the morning I drive to Pell Street, where the boy opens the door.

Griffin didn't speak to me in the car, and he didn't speak in the driveway.

He waited until Rhett had gone upstairs with his headphones and a plate of cold pasta.

Then he stood in the kitchen with his hands braced on the counter, and his voice was low and shaking.

"You asked her which baby she handed you."

"I did."

"In front of the boys. In front of my mother." He turned around. "Alana, that woman went into a burning building for our son."

"She went into a burning building for two babies."

"What does that even mean?"

"It means I don't know yet," I said. "That's why I asked."

"We are not doing this again."

"Again?"

He flinched.

It was small, a quick tightening around his eyes, the way he used to flinch before a sack.

"I mean," he said, "after everything. You were doing so well."

"I was doing what I was told."

"Alana."

"I told you then, Griffin. In the burn unit. I told you it wasn't him."

"Don't."

It was one word, and it came out of him so fast and so hard that it surprised us both.

I looked at his face.

I had been married to him for sixteen years, and I knew what he looked like when he was angry, scared, tired, or proud.

This was none of those.

This was a man standing very still so a door wouldn't open.

The front bell rang before I could say anything.

"That will be my mother," Griffin said, and he sounded relieved.

Bernadette didn't wait to be shown in.

She walked into my kitchen in her navy suit with her cane tapping the tile, and she took the chair at the head of the table, which was mine.

"I brought pie," she said, setting a box down. "Where's Everett?"

She was the only one alive who called him by his full name.

"Upstairs," I said.

"Good. Sit, Alana."

I stayed standing.

"I want to say something kindly," Bernadette said, "so I will say it once. Today you frightened a woman who has never done anything but love this family."

"Shanna took four thousand dollars a month from this family."

Griffin's head came up.

"I pay her to be thanked," he said. "That's not the same."

"It's exactly the same."

"Alana," Bernadette said.

The way she said it went down my back.

"You were very unwell," she went on. "Alder House was a kindness. I'd hate for anyone to think it wasn't. The doctor at Alder House still takes my calls."

"Is that a threat?"

"I'm only reminding you that there are people who care about you."

"You put me in a locked room for forty-one days."

"I put you somewhere safe." She folded her hands. "And look at you now. Look at this house."

"Look at my son," I said.

"Which one?" said Bernadette.

Nobody moved.

She hadn't meant to say it, I could tell, because she picked up her cane and set it on the table, very straight.

"Rhett," she said smoothly. "I meant Rhett, dear."

"I know what you meant," I said.

I took the keys from the hook by the door.

"Where are you going?" Griffin said.

"To get some air."

"It's ten at night."

"It's a long walk, then."

Nobody stopped me, which told me more than anything either of them had said.

I didn't go anywhere that night.

I sat in the car in the garage with the lights off and my hands on the wheel.

I thought about Shanna's smile.

I thought about the number twelve on her wrist and the way her thumb had rubbed it when I asked her the question.

I thought about Bernadette setting the cane down straight.

At six the next morning I took the sign-in sheet out of my Academy bag.

Every boy at tryouts had written an address, even the ones with taped cleats.

Dylan's said 418 Pell Street, Unit B.

I told Griffin I was running to the grocery store.

He was in the shower, singing the way he used to before games, and I felt it in my chest that he didn't know.

Pell Street was twenty minutes across town, past the strip malls and a closed-down laundromat.

Number 418 was a gray duplex with a sagging porch and a child's bicycle chained to the rail.

The gray Corolla was gone from the curb.

I stood on the walk for a full minute with my keys in my fist.

If I knocked, I would have no way to take it back.

I knocked.

Footsteps came down the hall, quick and light, a boy's footsteps.

The door swung open on its chain.

Dylan stood there in a Wilkes Middle gym shirt, a football tucked under one arm.

He looked at me through the gap.

His eyes weren't friendly, but they weren't afraid either.

"My mom says you're the lady they locked up," he said.

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