The Lost Quarterback Returns novel · Chapter 5 of 24
Chapter 5: The Car Outside
The black Lincoln was idling at the foot of the station steps, and a second car had pulled up behind it.
The second car had a camera on its dashboard.
By the time Griffin and I came through the glass doors, two reporters were already standing on the sidewalk.
One of them held up a phone with the neighbors' video playing on it.
"Mrs. Hartsell!" she called. "Is it true you were arrested outside a child's home?"
"I wasn't arrested," I said.
Bernadette climbed out of the Lincoln with her cane, composed and gentle and pale.
She laid a hand on my arm.
"Alana, dear," she said. "You're exhausted. Come home."
The rear door opened on the other side, and a gray-haired man in a tweed jacket stepped out.
He was carrying a leather bag, and he smiled at me the way he had smiled for forty-one days.
"Mrs. Hartsell," he said. "It's good to see you. I only want to help you rest."
"You brought a needle," I said.
"A very mild sedative."
"You brought it to a police station."
"Alana," Griffin said quietly. "Please."
I looked at him.
He stood three feet away with his hands open at his sides, and he did not look at the doctor, or at his mother, or at me.
He looked at the sidewalk.
My throat closed, and then it opened.
I turned and faced the cameras.
"My name is Alana Hartsell," I said, and my voice was steadier than I'd ever heard it. "I was locked in a clinic for forty-one days, and I'm not going back."
The reporter lowered her phone.
"Mrs. Hartsell, is that true?" she asked Bernadette.
"Of course not," Bernadette said. "My daughter-in-law is not well."
"It was Alder House, in Davidson," I said. "You can call and ask. They'll tell you it was voluntary, because I signed that, too."
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