Chapter 12: The Old Home

Seat A1 was in the front row, dead center, with a paper ticket still tucked into the cup holder.

DISPATCH, it said, in Hana's neat capitals.

I sat down in it at nine that night.

Forty thousand people filled the seats behind me, and a stage the size of a house rose in front of me.

Hana's trucks had built it.

Bird came out in a coat of silver sequins, with her braid swinging and glitter at the ends.

She sang for eighty minutes, and she didn't look at the seat once.

At the end, she walked to the lip of the stage, took the microphone off its stand, and pointed straight at me.

"This one's been empty for six years," she said.

The stadium went quiet.

"My little brother can find any truck in any state. Tonight he finally found his seat."

She lifted the mic like a handset.

"Dispatch, this is Bird. Come in, Dispatch."

I didn't have a voice.

I held up my father's radio, and forty thousand people made a sound I felt in my chest.

Hana stood at the side of the stage in her headset, openly crying.

She mouthed something at me that I'm fairly sure was a swear.

My phone buzzed at the encore.

Spook's text said: Lights are on at the Home. Shredder truck at the back door. Hammer's at the east gate.

St. Brigid's Home for Children stood at the end of a dead street in Canton.

A chain-link fence ran around it, with a county notice on the gate.

It had been closed for eleven years.

It was a long brick building, three stories, with the windows boarded.

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