Chapter 10: Business Only, Pellam

I didn't say anything for a long time.

Then I said, "Click."

"Mara."

"Click the next one."

Brogan clicked.

Slide ten was a table with three columns.

EPISODE. TRIGGER. HEARTH RESPONSE.

Episode 1, move-in day: unable to adjust to new home. Response: entry limited for safety.

Episode 2: agitation in the entryway. Response: lights held off to reduce stimulation.

Episode 40: crying at the front door in the rain. Response: calming message delivered.

I had cried at that door many times, and I had never heard a calming message.

I had heard "User not recognized."

Slide eleven was a list headed CONTRIBUTING FACTORS.

Loss of a parent, four years ago.

The line sat there in grey type, between "poor sleep" and "limited social network."

My mother died at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday in March, with Colleen on one side of the bed and me on the other.

Neil had put her on a slide.

I picked up my coffee mug from the bench and threw it as hard as I could at the wall.

It burst against the cinder block, and the pieces skittered across the floor.

Brogan didn't flinch.

"Good," he said quietly. "Throw another."

"He wrote my mother down as a symptom."

"I know."

"I stood in my own kitchen and said Lights on, and he was building a case study."

"Mara."

"He was watching me," I said. My voice cracked right down the middle. "Every time I cried in that hall, he counted it."

Brogan crossed the floor in three long strides.

He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat of his chest through his jacket.

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