Chapter 14: Forty-One Thousand

Hoyt handed me a mug of coffee at seven the next morning and did not say a word.

He leaned on the workbench in yesterday's jeans, and he looked entirely too pleased with himself.

"Say it," I said.

"I don't know what you mean."

"You've been smirking since the stairs."

"Nothing happens until my mother is safe from him," Hoyt said, in a very fair copy of my voice. "Not a kiss, not a drink, not a look."

"I was under stress."

"You told me to keep up."

"You did keep up."

He laughed, and I put my forehead against his chest, and for one minute the morning was warm and ordinary.

Then I handed him my phone.

He read the email from Harlan's lawyer once, and the smile went out of his face.

"A declaration of incapacity," he said. "So he can say she's unfit and take her back under a court order."

"Monday morning."

"Does she know?"

"She's up. I can hear her feet."

Ellen came down at eight, in her coat, with the fourth-floor nurse behind her carrying a tote bag.

She read the email standing, at the workbench, and handed the phone back.

"He is a coward," my mother said. "He's afraid to ask me anything in person."

"He sent a lawyer."

"A coward with a lawyer. Is there more coffee?"

I poured her a mug, and her hand did not shake.

At 11:40 there was a knock on the shop door.

Hoyt looked through the glass and then at me.

"It's Porter," he said. "Alone."

I let him in myself.

He had on the gray suit he'd been wearing at the lobby, three days old, and his tie was knotted crooked.

His sandy hair was greasy, and his eyes were red.

"I took the bus," Porter said. "He took the car. He took the badge. He changed the locks on my office before I got to work."

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