Chapter 21: The Gate Stays Open

"My mother's house," Dante said. "In the forest foothills, forty minutes from here."

"Is that so hard?"

"It has a wall. It has men on the gate."

"Do the gates open?"

"From inside, yes."

"Then I'll tell you what I want." Javier's voice was slurred with morphine and perfectly clear.

"One night. Not a month. One night, and I walk out the gate in the morning if I like."

"I carry my own phone. Nobody takes it."

"Nobody will take it."

"If I say I'm leaving, you drive me to the dormitory yourself. Even with the stairs."

"I'll carry you up the stairs."

"You will not carry me." A faint smile. "I'll climb them on my knees, and swear at you the whole way."

Dante pressed his forehead to the edge of the mattress.

He could not speak.

Javier's good hand settled on his hair.

"I'm choosing this," he said. "Say it back."

"You're choosing it."

"Say the rest."

"And you can leave."

"Good boy."

They discharged him on Friday afternoon.

Dante drove.

Daniel followed in his aunt's green sedan with a bag of Javier's books and a bag of cookies.

His curiosity was intense, and he carried it bravely all the way into the trees.

The gate opened as they came up the hill.

Two men in dark jackets stood either side of it, and neither looked into the car.

Javier looked at them.

"Security," he said.

"Yes."

"For a shipping firm."

"It's a large firm."

Javier turned his head against the seat and said nothing at all.

Maria met them at the door in an apron.

She had never worn an apron in either life.

"Javier," she said, and then, because he was swaying, "come in before you fall down. I've made soup."

She served him herself, at the kitchen table, in her own cups.

Daniel ate three bowls.

Nobody mentioned the portrait in the hall, or the chapel at the end of the east wing.

Nobody mentioned the silence of the house, which was forty men trying to stay out of sight.

By nine, Daniel had been driven home.

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