Chapter 14 · Rehab Tuesday

"Where's my brother?" I said it twice already, and the nurse at the desk still won't look up from her screen.

"Ma'am, visiting hours don't start till—"

"I'm not here to visit. I'm here because Danny didn't answer his phone since eight a.m. and Tuesdays he always answers." My knuckles are white on the counter edge. Two years of this place, two years of me showing up every single week, and now the woman's clicking through a screen like I'm the problem.

She finally looks up. "He checked out. Forty minutes ago. Family pickup."

"I'm his family. I didn't pick him up."

That's when her face does the thing. The bad thing. The thing where somebody realizes they signed off on a lie.

"The gentleman had ID," she says. "Said he was your husband."

My stomach drops through the floor. Luca's in Springfield till tonight, closing the Delgado thing. He is not here. He did not sign my brother out of rehab with a fake driver's license and a straight face.

"What did he look like."

"Dark hair. Nice suit. Very polite." She hesitates. "He left something for you, actually.