Chapter 14: The Doctor's Porch

I put my mother's card on Anson's kitchen table and looked at it for one full minute.

"I'm going," I said.

"She wants you there," Anson said. "That's the point of it."

"She wants me in Seat One with a knife in reach. I know."

"Then why go?"

"Because she doesn't know what I'll bring," I said.

I didn't have it yet.

Tilda was gone.

The only other person who had lied for my mother was a sweating man in a loosened tie.

"The doctor," I said. "Tonight."

The doctor's house stood at the top of Chestnut Hill, a brick colonial with a brass knocker and every window lit.

Anson stayed on the walk behind me.

I knocked twice.

The door opened on a chain, and an old woman looked out at me over her glasses.

She wore a gray cardigan.

She had sat at the end of the long table in the church hall and watched her husband drink water.

"I wondered which night it would be," she said.

She slid the chain off.

"He hasn't slept since Tuesday. Come in, Josephine. Mr. Prescott, you can wipe your feet."

The doctor sat in a study at the back, in his shirtsleeves.

A glass of brown liquor stood in front of him, and a closed folder lay under his hand.

He stood up so fast the chair fell over.

"You can't be here," he said. "Doctor-patient privilege..."

"I'm the patient," I said. "I'm waiving it."

"Your mother..."

"My mother put a bolt on the outside of my door for three years, and you signed the paper that kept it there."

His mouth worked.

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