Chapter 8: The Morning Shift

At six in the morning Piers Stanwyck was standing in my kitchen in his socks, losing a fight with my coffee maker.

"It's the lever," I said from the doorway.

"I'm pulling the lever."

"You're pulling the wrong lever."

He turned around, enormous in the little yellow room, holding a filter.

My mother had painted that kitchen herself in the summer I turned eleven.

It was the first time I'd seen anyone else in it since she went into the hospice.

"I made a rule on the stairs," he said.

"Which was?"

"No talking before coffee."

"You didn't say that."

"I thought it very loudly."

I took the filter out of his hand.

My fingers caught his, and neither of us let go as fast as we should have.

His phone lay face up on the counter beside the toaster.

The last message still glowed on the screen.

Did she mention the nursery?

"You haven't answered her," I said.

"No."

"What are you going to say?"

"That you didn't."

"I didn't."

"I know."

"Tell her I did."

He frowned at me.

"Why?"

"Because she's afraid of one word," I said, "and I want to see what she does with it."

He looked at the phone for a long time.

Then he picked it up and typed.

She said nothing.

He didn't send it.

"I can't lie to her yet," he said quietly.

"I owe her thirteen years."

"I'm not asking you to lie."

"I'm asking you to be quiet."

"That's the same thing in this building."

"Then it's a good thing we're not in the building."

We drove to St. Anne's together.

It was ten past eight and raining, with a gray sheet over the pond and lamps still lit in the corridors.

Pris was awake in her bed, eating dry toast with her fingers.

She looked at Piers once, long and flat.

"Come in, Mr. Stanwyck," she said.

"Don't hover."

He sat in the visitor's chair, which was too small.

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