Chapter 5: The Key

My coffee cup was hot enough to hurt.

I held it anyway.

"Lucky guess," I said.

"Lucky guess." Curtis laughed, loud enough that Jocelyn's mother looked up from her rosary. "I love that. I'm going to use that on the board."

He slapped my knee twice and stood.

His hand stayed one second longer than a slap needs.

I watched him walk back to Esteban and drape an arm over his shoulders.

At ten-forty that night in my first life, somebody had been watching the hallway.

Curtis had made a joke about it at my wedding.

I'd laughed.

I put the coffee down on the floor and didn't pick it up again.

At hour six the surgeon came out smiling.

Clean margins.

Jocelyn's mother sat down hard and cried into her husband's shirt.

Esteban put both hands over his face in the middle of the corridor and stood, not moving, while people walked around him.

Three days later he found me in the hospital parking garage.

He held out a key on a plain steel ring.

"Two bedrooms, by campus," he said. "Second floor, furnished. It's in your name."

I looked at the key.

Five years ago he gave me a key too.

To this house, the week I aged out.

He'd said, You don't have to earn it.

"Move in when you're ready," he said. "Sooner is better."

I took it.

I didn't say thank you.

I didn't ask why.

I put it in my jacket pocket and walked to my car.

Behind me he said, "Marisol," like there was more.

I didn't stop.

That weekend I started giving my life away.

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