Chapter 11: Twenty Minutes

I sat up in his bed with the sheet against my chest.

The night nurse's voice came back to me from six years ago.

"Huh. This one's older than your marriage."

I hadn't asked.

I'd been too angry to ask anything.

"When did you bank?" I said.

"A month before their wedding. The week before I went in."

"Their wedding was in June."

"Then it was May."

I closed my eyes.

Carmine had never been to Haverford in his life, as far as I knew.

He'd torn up the consent form in our kitchen rather than drive out there with me.

But there'd been a vial on his account, with his name on it.

"You don't even know what you took," Carmine had said in the hallway.

"Get dressed," I said. "I need a hair from your head."

By five in the morning we were in the suite at the Bellevue with the curtains shut.

Archie was asleep in the next room, flat on his back with his arms flung out, snoring.

Bess sat on the pull-out couch in a sweatshirt that said MIT ROWING, her hair in a knot, wide awake now.

"Tell me again," she said.

"I'll tell you in twenty minutes."

I'd brought the reader home from the lab in my bag every night since Saturday.

I'd never once thought I'd use it on my own son.

I went into Archie's room on my toes.

He'd shed on his pillow like a cat. He always did.

I picked up one dark hair with tweezers, and he mumbled something about turtles and rolled over.

Gianni stood in the doorway and watched me do it.

He'd put his suit back on with no tie and half the buttons missing.

He didn't come in.

I think he was afraid to.

At the table by the window I loaded the reader.

One hair from Archie in the first slot.

One hair from Gianni in the second.

The green light came on, and the little bar began to fill.

"Twenty minutes," Bess said.

"Twenty minutes," I said.

Nobody talked.

Gianni stood by the curtains, looking at the closed door of Archie's room.

Bess got up and made three cups of terrible hotel coffee and nobody drank them.

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