Chapter 4: The Study

I waited until the house went quiet.

The clock in the hall struck midnight, and then one.

The bolt on the outside of the door was a joke, because the hinges were on my side.

The dresser held a tray of hair pins, left out for me by someone who had never watched me fight.

I took the longest one and tapped out the top hinge, then the middle one, then the bottom.

Dutch had taught me that in the first month, with a pawn shop door and a hammer.

"Every lock has a back," he used to say.

I lifted the door off its frame and set it against the wall without a sound.

The hallway was dark, and I went down it in my socks.

A line of yellow light lay under the study door at the far end of the house.

Two voices came through it, low and unhurried.

I knew one of them better than my own.

I took out my phone, thumbed the recorder on, and pressed my ear to the wood.

"She looks healthy," the lawyer was saying. "She looks better than healthy. That's the problem."

"The problem is she is in my house," my father said. "She is on camera as my daughter. She isn't going anywhere."

"Eldon, she read the release in the car. She reads. She'll ask somebody what a death certificate takes."

"What does one take?"

"A body, or a very good doctor."

A glass clinked.

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