Chapter 5: Aunt Jo's Spare Room

Holden saw the red light, and his half smile fell off.

"Are you recording me?"

"Since you pulled in."

He lunged for the phone.

I stepped back off the top stair, so his hand closed on air, and I felt the railing hit my hip.

"Delete it," he said. "Delaney. Delete it right now."

"It's already in my email. It's in three places."

He stood there breathing, with his fist still half open.

For the first time in fourteen months he did not have a line ready.

"You're insane," he said. "You're actually insane. Camille was right about you."

"Go home, Holden."

"Don't text me. Don't come to my house. We're finished."

"I told you that on the train."

He got in his car, slammed the door, and left a long black mark on my father's driveway.

I stood on the porch a minute longer.

Then I went back inside, past the pot roast and the white plates, and up to my room.

I packed a duffel.

I took my laptop, my green hospice notebook, the Stanford folder from under my mattress, and the $212 I had saved from babysitting.

I left the brochure on the pillow.

Then I walked down the stairs and out the front door at 12:20 a.m. in the cold.

Nobody stopped me.

The house was dark.

My father's snoring came through the wall, and from behind Camille's door I heard her laughing again, low, into a phone.

My aunt Jo lives a mile and a half from us, in the yellow house on Compo Road with the crooked mailbox.

I walked it in forty minutes.

Her porch light was on, because Jo is a retired ER nurse and has never slept a full night in her life.

She opened the door in a flannel robe with a mug in her hand, and looked at the duffel, and looked at my face.

"Well," she said. "It took you long enough."

She took the bag out of my hand.

"Grilled cheese or eggs?"

"Grilled cheese."

"Sit."

Her kitchen smelled like butter and burnt toast, which is how it has smelled since I was five.

She fried the sandwich in a black pan, and she cut it into triangles like I was six.

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