Chapter 11: Family First

I stood in the hall dripping rainwater on the tile and read the note three times.

Then I peeled it off the wall and walked to the end of the hall and knocked on his office door.

He opened it in his white robe, with his reading glasses on and a FAMILY FIRST yard sign propped behind him.

"Sweetheart. You're soaked."

"Unlock my door."

"Of course."

He walked me back and turned the key, and pushed my door open for me.

"It's for your mother," he said. "Her pills keep going missing. She can't sleep for worrying."

"This way she knows nothing leaves your room without me."

"And nothing comes in."

"Exactly." He smiled. "Get some sleep. Big day tomorrow. The kickoff. I need my whole family smiling."

I went in.

Behind me, the key turned.

I stood very still in the dark and listened to his slippers go back down the hall.

Then I tried the knob.

Locked.

From the outside.

I opened my window as far as it went.

I sat on the sill with the wet desert air on my face until it got light.

At seven I climbed out of it.

Torin was at the curb with two coffees he'd watched being made.

"I'm putting a camera over the bar for the party," he said. "Tiny. Card only."

"Not on his network, so he can't see it or delete it."

"What do you think he's going to do?"

"I don't know." He handed me a coffee. "That's why I'm putting up a camera."

Gage swabbed my mouth at eight in the pool house doorway, before he finished carrying out his last two boxes.

Five minutes.

One line for every drug.

Negative across the board.

"Keep it that way," he said. "Open your own cans. Eat nothing. I'll be there."

"Your dad threw you out."

"My dad invited me back for the photographs." His mouth twisted. "Family first."

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