Chapter 12: Signed Out

Maeve answered the phone before the second ring.

"Ms. Prendergast? This is the night nurse at Harbor House."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong with your father's health," the woman said carefully. "But he isn't here. Your mother signed him out at eleven-forty."

Maeve sat up in the bed with the sheet clutched to her chest.

"Signed him out where?"

"She's his legal guardian. She had the form. She said he was going home for the night."

"Did he want to go?"

"He was confused. He asked for you twice." The nurse's voice was unhappy. "I'm sorry. I couldn't stop her."

Maeve hung up.

Niall was already pulling his jeans on.

"Where?"

"My mother's house, in Quincy. Twenty minutes."

"Fifteen," Niall said. "I'm driving."

He made it in thirteen.

The house was a narrow white colonial on a street of narrow white colonials, with one lit window at the back.

Maeve had grown up in it.

All her life she had walked up that porch like she belonged, and tonight she felt like a stranger on it.

She rang the bell, and then she kept her finger on it.

Alexis opened the door.

She was in flannel pajamas, with her hair in a knot and no lipstick on.

For the first time in her life she looked exactly her age.

"Maeve." She glanced at Niall, and then at Maeve's face. "It's one in the morning."

"Where's my father?"

"He's asleep. Mom said not to wake him."

"Move."

"You can't just come in!"

"It's my father's house." Maeve walked past her into the hall. "Where is he?"

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