Page 100

The room keeps going around us. Showers run, the music changes, Roman argues with somebody about where his clean socks went while wearing one of them.

Quinn’s message stays where it is.

I shower, dress, and leave my bag at the rink.

Nothing in my hands.

I pass the turn for the grocery store.

I pass the coffee place near her building.

I am standing outside her door with my phone and my keys in my pockets and no defense for either one.

I knock.

The door opens before I can do it twice.

Astrid looks at my hands first.

“Nothing,” I say.

“I can see that.”

“Wanted the record clear.”

“Come in.”

The apartment smells faintly like toast and the lemon cleaner Gabi uses at the clinic. Tova’s shoes are under the bench by the wall. Her backpack isn’t.

The piano takes up more of the room than it should and somehow makes the whole place look less temporary.

“Where’s Tova?”

“With Gabi. They are having dinner, and Gabi has strict instructions not to ask her any questions.”

“How’s that going?”

“Gabi sent me a photograph of two closed mouths.”

I can see it, which nearly gets a smile out of me.

Astrid shuts the door. The table’s cleared except for a yellow legal pad, a blue folder, and two glasses of water.

No tea. No coffee. Nothing either one of us can pretend needs attention.

She points at the chair across from hers. I sit. She doesn’t.

For a second she stands with one hand on the back of her own chair, looking at the pad like it might have changed since this afternoon.

“You said fifty-one days.”

Her eyes come up. “You said you would listen.”

“I am.”

“Then let me finish.”

I lean back and put both hands on my thighs. “Go.”