Chapter 10: The Clinic

Willa let me into the school library through the side door at five-fifteen on Tuesday.

The lights in the main room were off.

Only the lamp over the circulation desk was on.

It made a gold circle on a pile of returned picture books.

"Janitor leaves at five," she said. "Nobody comes back until seven."

"You have a key to the whole school?"

"I have a key to the library, and the library is the only part that matters."

She locked the door behind us and turned the bolt.

She was wearing a gray cardigan with the elbows worn through, and her braid hung over one shoulder.

Her eyes were red around the edges.

"You look like you haven't slept," I said.

"You look like you've been sleeping in a closet."

"The guest room is practically a closet."

She almost smiled.

I opened my laptop on the desk and turned it toward her.

"I need you to read something."

I had put it together carefully.

It was two hundred photos of her screen cut down to six.

I had put them in order, one after another.

Willa read them slowly with her hand over her mouth.

She read the rest and then she read them again.

"What appointment?" she said.

"The vasectomy."

She stared at me.

"Dane drove you," she said.

"Yes."

"He told me about that the same night. He laughed when he said it."

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