Chapter 16: Joan

The Channel 6 lobby at five in the morning had a security guard and a coffee machine.

On the wall was a mural of Philadelphia with a smiling cartoon sun.

Joan walked in first.

She wore her good navy coat and carried her purse in both hands.

Tilly and I followed, a step behind.

Trevor came through the glass doors from the parking garage at ten past five.

He had a garment bag over his shoulder and a coffee in his hand.

He saw his mother and stopped dead.

"Mom."

"Good morning, Trevor."

"What are you doing here?" He glanced at us. At Tilly, longest. "This isn't the place."

"It's exactly the place," Joan said. "Your place of work. Where you are admired."

The guard looked up from his phone.

Two crew members at the elevator stopped talking.

"I have four things to tell you," Joan said, in the voice that had once emptied a cafeteria.

"I'll be brief, because you have a show."

"Mom, please, I'll call you after."

"First. The key to my house is in my purse."

She held up his key ring.

She had taken it off the hook in her kitchen on Saturday night, and he had not noticed.

"Second. I co-signed the lease on that apartment, and the loan on your car. I called both yesterday."

She did not look away from him.

"The landlord has agreed to put Eliza's name alone on the lease. The bank will be more patient than I am."

"You can't do that."

"I can, and I did. The bank is more patient. You have thirty days."

His face had gone pale.

"Third. There is a savings account in your name. I have put money into it every month since you were nineteen."

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