The Man Who Can't Let Go novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Room Four-Twelve

Tobias VanAlstyne took the elevator to the fourth floor of Empire General at nine that night.

He stood outside Room 412 for a long time.

Virginia had offered to come up with him.

He had asked her to wait in the lobby, and she had said, "I'll be here."

She had bought a vending machine coffee and wasn't going to drink it.

Abel met him at the door in his street clothes, because he was still barred from the wards.

"Mild," Abel said. "She had chest pain at her desk, and they found a blockage."

"They put in a stent this evening. She'll be home in three days."

"Is she awake?"

"She's been asking for you for four hours."

Tobias pushed the door.

The room was quiet and dim, and the woman in the bed was smaller than his mother.

Greta had no pearls on and no lipstick, and her silver hair lay flat on the pillow.

An IV ran into the back of her hand, and the monitor over her head made a steady green line.

"There you are," she said.

"Mother."

"I told the nurse you'd come. She said sons do, even after everything."

He pulled the chair to the bedside and sat in it.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

He had planned a hundred speeches on the way up.

None of them fit a woman with a tube in her hand.

"They tell me it was my heart," she said.

"It was."

"It's been under strain for three years." She turned her head on the pillow. "Do you know why?"

"I can guess."

"I watched your father die on this floor, when you were nineteen."

"He was waiting for something, too, and it never came."

Her voice was low and even.

"I swore I'd never watch you do that. I thought I was sparing you."

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