Chapter 15: Responsible Adult

Dalton's POV

My mother kept the paper in her apron pocket, folded in four, and she handed it to me with two fingers.

We stood in the diner's back hall by the mop sink, because I had asked her not to have this in front of the room.

It was a photocopy from the Lakeside Pediatric Clinic.

Patient: Arlen Sundberg. Date of visit: July 19.

At the bottom, under Responsible Adult, was my signature.

Under that, on the line marked Relationship to patient, somebody had written the word father.

"Colette says you drove them," my mother said. "She says you signed for him because you were his father, and the nurse knew it."

"I drove them."

"So it's true."

"Mom, listen to me. He had a fever of a hundred and four, and she was alone with him in the truck."

I told her the rest fast.

"I carried him in. The woman at the desk shoved a clipboard at me and said he needed an adult on file."

"I signed the one line she pointed at."

"That's your handwriting," my mother said.

"The name is. The word under it isn't."

My mother looked at the page.

I held it up to the bulb over the sink.

My name was in the clinic's black gel pen, pressed deep.

The word father was in blue ballpoint, thin and slanting.

"It was blank," I said. "I'd have noticed."

"Would you?"

I had no good answer, so I told her the true one.

"I wasn't looking, Mom. That baby was burning up in my arms, and I wasn't looking at anything."

My mother pressed her lips together.

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