Chapter 22: Yvonne Alone

The surgeon came out at six in the morning, pulled off his cap, and looked down at me.

"Working."

I sat down on the waiting room floor because my legs had decided for me.

The stranger's kidney had started to make urine in the operating room, and Lila's numbers were climbing.

"She's asking for her friend," the surgeon said. "Not for her parents."

"Good."

"She asked whether you were still there."

"Tell her no," I said. "Tell her I went home. She'll sleep better."

He nodded.

Anson was waiting at the end of the corridor, holding his phone.

"The old gravedigger called me at five," he said. "Your mother has been at the plot since midnight."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

I thought about it for one breath.

"Take me," I said.

The grass on the hill was wet and pale with early light.

Yvonne knelt in front of the headstone in a black dress, with no veil and no pearls, and her knees were dark from the ground.

She did not hear us until I was a few feet away.

Then she turned and put both hands over her mouth.

"I signed everything over this morning," she said. "My shares, my seat, the foundation's trust. Every piece of it goes to your fund."

"I heard."

"I told the attorney general all of it. The clinic, the lawyer, the money, what Preston said in the car."

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