Shepherd asked my father whether he had known the brace was being locked shut with a padlock every day.

My father said he had known it was supposed to stay on, for my spine, but he looked at the hardware as though he had never seen it before, because he never had.

Then the doctor asked who had told him the lock was a medical requirement, and I watched the understanding arrive in my father’s face a half-second before he turned to Nana and said, in a voice that had dropped low, “Mom.

You told me this lock came from the clinic.”

Chapter 8 — We Do Not Lock Braces

Nana did not even bother to deny it.