Chapter 4

I left Verna’s house with the copy of the consent folded in my jacket. She didn’t try to stop me. She just watched from the door like I was a patient she had already written off.

At home, Junie was asleep on the couch with the TV still on. Dev had dropped her off early. He had texted twice. I read neither. I covered her with the quilt and stood in the kitchen with the consent under the light.

My signature. My mother’s notary stamp. Three days after Amos was born.

I pulled my own ICU record from the hospital out of my bag. Page six: March 14, 3:12 a.m., patient sedated, non-responsive to verbal stimuli. Page seven: March 14, 7:40 a.m., patient remains sedated, no meaningful response. The notary date on the consent was March 14.

I had been in the ICU. I had not signed anything.

Or I had signed something and not remembered. That was the hole Verna wanted me in. Not knowing.

The next morning I called Cory. He worked the coal dock scale house, ten-hour shifts, and he answered on the second ring with the wind sawing at his phone.

“I need to talk to you.”

“About?”

“Fern Lattimore.”

Silence. Then, “Where are you?”

“I’ll meet you at the scale house.”

He was standing outside his truck when I got there, a tall twenty-nine-year-old in a hi-vis vest and a knit cap, coffee in one hand. He looked like our father around the eyes. He looked like Verna around the mouth.

“You talked to Mom,” he said.

“I talked to Fern.”

He took a drink of coffee. “Then you know.”

“I know Fern has him. I don’t know who carried him out.”

Cory looked at the coal piles. The wind pushed diesel and snow grit across the lot.

“I was twenty,” he said. “Mom called me. She said you were dying and the baby needed to go somewhere safe. She said a doctor at Mercy told her the state was already involved. She asked me to drive.”

“Drive who?”

“Mom and the baby. To Lakeshore Family Services. It was on Fifth, by the old bakery. A woman there took the intake. Fern met us there. She signed the papers.”

“You saw Fern sign?”

“I saw her sign.” He swallowed. “I didn’t know they were going to tell you he died. I swear. I thought you knew. I thought you agreed.”

“I was in the ICU.”

“I didn’t know that then. I was twenty.”

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hold onto him. I did neither.

“The agency,” I said. “Who did you talk to?”

“A woman named Patricia Vann. Director, I think. She retired a few years ago.”

“Lakeshore kept a copy?”

Cory shook his head. “Mom said the file was sealed. She said it was taken care of.”

“Taken care of,” I repeated.

“Don’t tell Mom I talked to you,” he said. “Please.”

I looked at my little brother, who had carried this for nine years and never once looked at me like he was sorry. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. I couldn’t tell.

“I won’t,” I said. I hated the debt as soon as I owed it.