Chapter 16: The Drive

Stanley heard it from the investigator's own mouth, on the sidewalk outside the hardware store.

"What else is on file," he repeated.

He took the whistle off his neck, looked at it, and put it in his pocket.

That was how I knew he was angry.

In twenty years of coaching, Mom said, he had only done that once, and a referee had needed stitches.

"Get in the truck," Stanley said. "All of you."

"Dad," said Justin. "It isn't my clinic anymore."

"It's your name on the sign, and your mother's name in the cornerstone. I'm not asking."

We drove the forty minutes with Stanley at the wheel and Mom in the middle of the bench seat holding his knee.

Justin and I sat in the back.

His hand found mine on the seat, and neither of us said a word.

The clinic's front door was locked.

Stanley leaned on the buzzer until it stuck.

A nurse in lavender scrubs opened it a crack.

She looked at Stanley, then at Justin, then at me.

Her eyes went wet.

"Dr. Hostetler," she whispered. "Ms. Hostetler's at the board office until three. She told us to keep everyone out."

"Then you should have a very good reason to keep me out," Stanley said.

The nurse looked over her shoulder.

"I don't," she said, and opened the door.

She led us past the waiting room and down a hallway I'd seen once on a paper gown.

The supply closet was behind the lab, a narrow room with an air conditioner humming in the corner.

A black server sat on a steel shelf among the boxes of gloves.

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